


Kazama: The Starting Line

by Xandiki



Series: Kazama the Hunter Nin [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Bijuu Lords, Daughter of the Hokou, Hanyou OC, Multi, Shenanigans, Team 13
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27190241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xandiki/pseuds/Xandiki
Summary: Tsume chased off her partner sometime before the Kyuubi attack. What she did not expect was for her partner's daughter to show up with a request for the Hokage. Long story short the girl becomes an Inuzuka and unknowingly their future Savior. This is the story of Kazama Oretzi and her role in Uzumaki Naruto's life. Future f/f yuri (pairing undecided) *first of a trilogy*
Series: Kazama the Hunter Nin [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984847
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posting from Fanfiction . net   
> Posting will be weekly until we're caught up to what I currently have over there (approximately 59 chapters)

It has been roughly eight years since the attack on Konoha by the Nine-Tailed Fox, since the death of the Fourth Hokage - Sarutobi’s chosen successor. The Yondaime - having died much sooner than he had expected - had chosen no successor in the event of his death so the previous Hokage stepped up to the task once again. Passing laws to secure the safety of the sole reason for their continued existence.

Now he faces a difficult decision. A decision that may increase the hostilities in the village if he doesn’t play this just right. The politics made him wish there is a suitable successor for him to choose so he can step down again and leave the headache to them.

Sarutobi looks down at the scroll in his hands. Listing the details of the person whom he has been requested to accept into the village and consider adding to the Shinobi academy.

**_Name_ ** _: Kazama, Oretzi  
 **Parentage** : Unknown **  
Age** : 8 years  
 **Birthdate** : March 21  
 **Bloodtype** : A  
 **Gender** : female  
 **Hair** : dark brown with streaks of silvery white  
 **Eyes** : dark brown | Suspicion of a doujutsu - yet to have developed or revealed itself  
 **Height** : 4’8” | possibly will grow some more  
 **Weight** : slightly underweight for height  
 **Notes** : Possibility of demonic parentage. Has a black flexible tail similar to a dog. Nails are sharp and untypically pointed despite filing them down. Rapid healing and unstable chakra manifests whenever angered. Has a great sense of smell and hearing [side note: a dog whistle - blown at the other side of the village - reduced Kazama to tears and begging for the noise to stop]_

“You want me to accept Kazama-chan into Konoha,” Sarutobi repeats as he looks at the woman before him, a tall blonde in her mid to late forties. He would be willing to accept her but with Uzumaki Naruto already causing trouble with his pranks and the tension reaching a new high as civilians and Shinobi alike call for his death at the Council meetings. “In addition to that, you want me to consider her for the Shinobi academy. Did I forget anything else?”

“That’s everything, Sandaime Hokage,” the woman tells him.

“I will admit that Kazama-chan has some admirable traits,” he starts, rolling up the scroll. “Yet, the fact that she has a demonic parent makes this decision quite difficult.”

“I’m aware, Sandaime-san. However, she has shown some skills in being a tracker.” Sarutobi motions for her to continue. “Once, when someone snatched a child from the orphanage she retrieved one of the girl’s shirts and used it to get her scent. She then led the local police straight to the man’s hideout - right before anything bad could happen to the child.” Sarutobi could see the benefits of having her trained to be a hunter-nin, if she so wished it.

“Skills or not,” he starts, “there is still the fact that she has a tail. No amount of hiding will keep her identity a secret.” He picks up his pipe and takes a few puffs. “If someone discovers the fact that she is a half demon there will be riots all across this village.”

The matron of the orphanage makes to say something but stops when there is a soft tentative knock on the door behind her. She recognizes it to belong to her charge and looks at the Sandaime Hokage who is puzzled as to who it could be. “Come in,” the elderly man calls to the person.

The door swings open to reveal the girl in question. Sarutobi couldn’t help but note the long trench coat that the girl is wearing, effectively hiding her tail or so it would seem. Dark brown eyes stare up at him from the doorway, her dark hair unnaturally spiked and wild in a manner that reminds him of Uzumaki Naruto. There is a single white streak starting at the center of her bangs and swept over her right eye - just slightly obscuring his ability to look at that one. The girl looks like she has already lost all of her baby fat on her face and he was stunned to find that she has already mastered a serious expression that seems to age her beyond her years.

“Pardon me, Hokage-sama,” the girl bows before she steps into the office, shutting the door behind her. “But I could not help but hear your conversation.”

“Eavesdropping is bad,” Sarutobi tells her, “Unless you’re a Shinobi.”

“Hokage-sama, she cannot help but overhear things, even behind closed doors,” the Matron puts in quickly. She didn’t want him to assume that Kazama is a nosy child. To be quite honest she usually allow people to keep their secrets, despite the possibility she may already know each and every one of them.

“Ah… your hearing,” Sarutobi states simply, recalling the mention regarding the dog whistle. If the girl is allowed to live in the village he’ll have to request the Inuzuka clan to not use any dog whistles or something of the like.

“Aye,” the girl says before getting down to her knees and press her forehead to the floor in a show of ultimate submission, her posture rigid as she forces herself. “Please, Hokage-sama, permit me to make my case to you.”

“You are much too old for your age,” he sighs before telling the girl to get up. “Please, sit. Tell me, what is your reasons to want to join the village?”

The girl eases herself into one of the chairs in the office, her hands on her knees. “Has the Matron told you much about my past?” She was staring only at him so when he shakes his head no she sighs to herself. “Up until I was five years old I had lived with the local pack of wolves. Not just any wolves though.” She watch his eyes widen slightly at what she is hinting at. “The alpha has told me stories about my mother who fell in love with a man. He never told me what happened to her but they believe she died. My father, however, was - according to the alpha - formerly a member of Konoha Shinobi ranks.”

This surprised Sarutobi, causing him to reconsider the girl seriously. There were many Shinobi members he had to consider, not counting the ones who were killed in the Kyuubi attack.“Do you have any details you know about your father?”

The girl looks thoughtful for a moment before she digs into her trench coat’s pockets. “The alpha female, she gave me this just before they left me at the village to make my way with the humans. She told me to go to the village from where he lived and join the clan he left,” she explains as she pulls out apendant that is on a thick chain-like necklace. She hands it over to the Hokage and he is stunned to recognize the red fang that are usually tattooed [painted as it is the case for those younger than 16] onto the members of the Inuzuka clan.

“This… alpha female,” he pauses to make sure he had that right. When she nods at him he continues, “She gave you this saying that it belonged to your father?”

“Hai. Stalks the Night,” the girl starts only to get a confused look at the name, “That’s the alpha female’s name.” He nods his head in understanding. “Stalks the Night once told me that my father was chased away by his partner - the head of the clan from which he is from, only by marriage.”

He taps his fingers on his desk, considering his actions now. Inuzuka Tsume would not be pleased to hear that her former partner’s offspring has shown up in his office. Nor would she be pleased to know that the child has been left in the care of the orphanage of some random civilian village. If there is one thing he knows about Inuzuka Tsume it’s that she hates the orphanages.

“Matron, Kazama-chan, please excuse me for an hour,” he tells them after he made his decision. The two nod their heads in acceptance and make to leave. “Wait,” he calls after them and gets his secretary to summon up one of the jonins to escort the two around the village for now.

Maybe five minutes later one of the Tokubetsu Jonins appeared in his office with a whirl of leaves that has young Kazama gawking at the display. He has to stifle his chuckles at the girl’s amazement, taking it as a sign that the small village where she has been left is too small to host their own Shinobi.

The Tokubetsu Jonin turns out to be Mitarashi Anko, a purple haired woman with lavender eyes that always look blank to him. If memory serves him right she’ll be turning twenty soon and might be the right sensei for the young Kazama. He’s getting ahead of himself. First the girl must accept entering the academy and then graduate from it before he can consider her sensei.

“Mitarashi-san, would you be so kind to show Matron Kin and her charge to a nearby restaurant?” he requests her.

The jonin looks down at the girl in the chair who looks at her with those wide eyes, strangely showing her age for the first time in front of Sarutobi. “Sure thing, Hokage-sama.” She moves to the door and swings it open, holding it steady for her two charges. “I hope you like dango dumplings.”

For the first time since she arrived in Konohagakure in hopes of convincing the Hokage to permit her into the village, Kazama smiles and Anko is struck by the innocence in the girl’s face. Almost as fast the girl ducks her head and she mumbles something too low for the older woman to hear. So she turns to the Matron with a questioning look. “Translation?”

“She likes dango, a lot,” Kin tells her, shaking her head. “I hope you’re prepared to lose a great deal of money to pay for her.”

“Eats a lot?”

“If I let her eat only three meals a day she’ll unfortunately eat the orphanage out of their money,” the Matron explains solemnly, unhappy that she has to restrict the girl’s eating.

“Wouldn’t that make her eat more, to compensate the lack of meals?” Anko questions and gets a slow nod. “Well, that’s stupid.”

“You’ll understand once you’ve seen her eat,” is Kin’s only response.

~Kazama~

Sarutobi studies the pendant in his hand, turning it over several times as he waits for another Tokubetsu Jonin to join him.“Hokage-sama?” he hears and he looks up to see Inuzuka Tsume step into the office with her companion, Kuromaru, right by her side. Kuromaru is a large wolfish dog with his left ear missing and a patch over his right eye. The top of his head at a height just around Tsume’s waist. He is probably one of the largest dogs in Konoha, second to Hatake’s ninken, Bull.

“Ah, Tsume, thank you for making time for me,” he says to her, gesturing at one of the chairs.

“Of course, Hokage-sama,” she says to her, her wild hair framing her face and fang-like tattoos. “What was it that you needed?”

“Please, have a seat. I believe this conversation will not be easy for everyone in this office.” Tsume share a look with Kuromaru before taking a seat as per his request. “Now… I believe you would know what this is?” he questions as he leans forward, dropping the pendant into Tsume’s outstretched hand.

She instinctively curls her fingers around the cool metal that hits her palm. She brings her hand closer to her chest before opening her fingers, her eyes widening at the familiar sigil of her clan. She had not seen this pendant in years, not since she chased off Hana and Kiba’s father shortly before Kiba was born.“What are you doing with this?” she questions softly, her eyes dark and borderline feral as she looks at the Hokage.

“There is a child here in the village,” he starts, holding up a hand to ward off any protests or shouts from the Inuzuka clan Head. “The Matron of an orphanage in one of Konoha’s vassal villages brought the child here in an effort to have her accepted into the village and into the Shinobi academy. She had this pendant with her, given to her prior being left in the vassal village.”

“Orphanage?” she mutters in surprise before she is handed a scroll. She unrolls it and quickly scans through the information, her hands shaking as she reads the information about her demonic parentage. “What does this child has to do with me?” she questions, bunching the scroll in her hands before Kuromaru bumps his nose against her hand. She quickly rolls the scroll up before she destroys it any further.

“The child claims that the pendant belonged to her father. Left for her prior his disappearance with the instruction that she is to join Konoha and join the clan he previously belonged to.” He has to lean back when Tsume slam her hands onto his desk.

“There’s no way in hell that my kids’ father even fathered another child!”

“I was not under the impression that he was neutered prior his departure,” Sarutobi says calmly, getting a wince from Kuromaru at the mention of being neutered. Tsume falls back into her chair as she rubs the bridge of her nose, exasperated by the constant headache her former partner always seems to give her. “Now, regarding the girl’s mother… well, from the information provided to us by the Matron she shows a link to wolf demons.”

Tsume and Kuromaru looks at him, startled by what he said. “Wolf demons? They’re impossible to even find! Let alone talk to them!” Tsume protests. “And you mean to tell me that he sired a child with a wolf?!”

“According to the child, yes.” Tsume growls lowly under her breath as she shakes her head in disbelief. “Now, there is an issue I would like to discuss with you.” This catches her wandering mind again and she nods her head, giving him her full attention. “I have yet to decide if Konoha can accept the presence of another demon, even if she is a hanyou. Never mind the fact that Naruto is simply a jinchuuriki.” Kuromaru nods his head, recalling the fact that many of the civilians and shinobi alike are unwilling to let go of their hatred for the Kyuubi vessel. Going so far to beat him up on his birthdays. “The girl had been instructed, three years prior, to come here and join your clan.”

Tsume went tense at his words and made to protest, getting a quick ‘hold on now’ gesture from Sarutobi. “She does not know what clan her father is from. All she has is the pendant which I have shown you. In the event which I decide to accept her into the village I can easily tell her that the clan does not exist any longer.” He staples his fingers together and uses it to prop his chin up as he stares thoughtfully at her. “However, due to her sensitive hearing any dog whistles in the village will be banned to protect her. I will also have to station guards to ensure that the villagers does not attempt to kill her upon the discovery of her hanyou status.”

“This all sounds like a great deal of paperwork for you, Hokage-sama,”she comments drily.

“In all honesty, it is,” he sighs as he considers the young girl. She - according to the information provided by the Matron - is roughly the age of Kiba. “However, I would accept the girl into our ranks in any case.”

“Why?”

“Because, Tsume-san, I believe that the next generation will be better than us,” he says simply. Kuromaru and Tsume look at him, puzzled before slowly nodding their head reluctantly as if to say ‘I don’t know what you said, but okay’. “In any case, I will let you decide if you wish to permit the child into your clan or not. Please let me know within the hour.”

She bows to him in respect, taking his words as dismissal, and leaves with Kuromaru besides her. She waits until they have exited the office before looking down at him. “What do you think, Kuromaru?”

_“I say the child could be a great asset to the clan,”_ the wolf-dog comments drily. _“A wolf hanyou of all things is extremely rare. She would benefit greatly from the clan’s techniques.”_

“How the hell would I even begin to explain this to Hana and Kiba?” Tsume wonders out loud.

_“I would suggest waiting until you have made your decision,”_ Kuromaru could remember that she particularly disliked her partner near the end of their relationship. It came to an ugly head when she discovered that she was pregnant again - she had sworn up and down that she was never going to get pregnant again after Hana - and she chased him away. She stayed in Konoha during the pregnancy, giving birth to Kiba, and resumed missions afterwards. _“The child has little to no connection to the clan. The council elders will not be willing to accept her into the clan unless you wrestle them into submission.”_

“If the child had been born a dog hanyou it would be much easier,” Tsume sighs. Dogs, they can understand. They spend their entire lives around them. But wolves have a strong animosity towards their distant canine relatives. She has yet to meet the child so she doesn’t know if the girl will have the same animosity towards dogs as her wolf ancestors do.

They were passing a dango shop when they hear Anko’s shout of laughter and amusement. “Damn girl, do you even have a limit?”

“I told you she’ll eat you into an early grave, Mitarashi-san,” they hear a soft spoken feminine voice say.

“Maybe if you let her eat more often she wouldn’t eat your precious orphanage into bankruptcy,” came the woman’s harsh reprimand.

“Orphanage?” Tsume mutters as she looks at her companion. “Surely this could be a coincidence.”

_“I think by now we know better than to assume such a thing,”_ Kuromaru says gruffly. Tsume nods her head in agreement and she steps into the shop with him right behind her. Automatically her eyes land on Mitarashi Anko, a woman whom she had the pleasure of working side by side with several times over the years. Her eyes wonder from the Tokubetsu Jonin and lands on the elderly woman who is bickering with Anko about limited money and food before finally finding the subject of their heated debate.

It is a small girl, standing at perhaps five feet, with her dark wild hair giving her the appearance of an extra inch or two. The wild hair reminds her of her own hair, amusing her a great deal. The girl looked older and taller beyond her years, the baby fat practically nonexistence on her face and body. There was strangely a silver white streak that starts at the center of her hair and drops down through her bangs which have been partially swept over her right eye. The girl is wearing a long trench coat similar to the one Mitarashi Anko is wearing except its’ black. The girl is also wearing a completely black outfit.

Kuromaru looks over the girl with approval. _“She certainly does have the making of a shinobi,”_ the ninken comments, attracting the attention of Anko and the woman.

“Tsume!” Anko acknowledges, waving her over. “What you doing here?”

“I overheard your loud voice from outside and thought I’d see what trouble you were getting into,” is Tsume’s only response as she waves down a waiter and gave her orders.

“Ah,” Anko had the decency to look bashful. “Let me introduce everyone,” she says before she clears her throat. “Tsume, this is Matron Kin from Phoenix, one of Konohagakure’s vassals. With her is Kazama Oretzi.” The two bow to Tsume who recognized the girl’s name from the scroll. So this is the one who her former partner sired. Obviously she gained her looks from her demon mother. “This is Inuzuka Tsume and her companion, Kuromaru.”

_“Hello,”_ Kuromaru greets them, getting a stunned look from Matron Kin and an amused smile from the girl, Kazama Oretzi.

“He can talk?” Matron Kin says in shock while Kazama looks curiously at Tsume.

The mother of two looks at the girl, noticing the question on her face. “What is it?”

“Can I give him one of my dango?” the girl asks, holding up her last one.

“It’s up to Kuromaru,” she answers her, looking down at the dog in question. Kuromaru doesn’t even say anything, simply moved around so that he’s right next to Kazama and when she offers the dango - off the stick of course - to him he gobbles it up. The girl smiles before dropping her hands into her lap, gripping her hands tightly.

Tsume was surprised to realize that the girl wanted to pet Kuromaru but isn’t asking out of respect. She hadn’t expected something like that and was now puzzled as to what she should think. She had been presuming that the girl would harbor the same animosity her ancestors bear towards dogs.

_“You can pet me,”_ the ninken spoke up, startling the child out of her thoughts.

“Really?” she asks excitedly. Kuromaru just nods his head and she smiles at him, first petting his head gently, her hand shifting through his rough fur and sliding down over his back before returning to his head. This time she scratches at a spot right behind his ear and he can’t help the wag of his tail when she finds that one spot he can never get. When his tail begins to thump against the floor she takes that as a good sign and continues scratching at it.

“Not many knows where to scratch him,” Tsume comments idly, smirking at the pure bliss on her companion’s face. She regrets that she doesn’t get much time to tend to him as she used to but it is amusing watching this scene unfold.

“The alpha pair had a litter just before they left me with Matron Kin,” Kazama explains, “The pups always wanted to be scratched right behind the ears.”

“You lived with the wolves?” Tsume questions softly.

“Yah-huh. Stalks the Night told me that mama left me with them before she disappeared. They think she died though.” Tsume caught that and leans forward to look at the girl’s dark brown eyes. Kazama looks back at her, unflinchingly, and she was struck with the notion that she’d make a great clan head someday. Already she shows the attitude of an alpha by not averting her eyes.

“But you don’t?”

Kazama shakes her head and puts a hand over her heart. “I think mama had to go away to keep me safe…” Tsume was not surprised but amazed by the girl’s ability to be so sure about a matter such as her mother, who apparently been missing from her life since she was a baby.“Stalks the Night told me stories about mama. About how she was the strongest wolf to ever walk on this world and how her five tails could create illusions so powerful no one can ever break free. She could also control plants!”

Tsume and Anko coughs as they realize just who or what little Kazama was describing. She had not expected hear that the Hokou had sired a child! Tsume couldn’t believe that one of the Nine Bijuu Lords had sired a child with a human!

“Kazama,” Matron Kin reprimands quietly, realizing belatedly that her charge has revealed too much about her heritage. The girl looks at her, startled, before ducking her head. She drops her hand from Kuromaru’s head and the ninken looks at her in concern. He shares a glance with his human companion before sighing, moving to rejoin her side. “I think it is best we turn to the Tower,” the elderly woman says as she stands, her hand finding purchase at the girl’s neck.

The two trained Kunoichi and ninken did not miss the way Kazama tensed at the touch. Tsume, sensing a valid reason behind this, makes to protest the treatment. Anko quickly stands up and ushers them out of the shop, her actions separating the Matron from the young girl. The younger woman’s action did not go unnoticed by Tsume and she lets out a relieved and thankful sigh.

_“I sense that the girl is particular sensitive at the neck,”_ Kuromaru states bluntly, getting a ‘no shit’ look from Tsume. _“What worries me, however, is the reaction she had.”_

“You don’t think she’s been abused?” Tsume growls softly under her breath.

_“Considering the girl lived in an orphanage, for three years, with obvious proof of her mix heritage,”_ Kuromaru starts, _“I would not be surprised.”_ He gives Tsume a look. _“After all, Uzumaki does not bear the same obvious signs of his ‘burden’ and yet the entirety of the village takes their anger and fear out upon him.”_

“The boy has too obvious features,” the woman states drily as she splits her order into two, handing one half to Kuromaru who quickly snatches it up with a snap of his jaws. “And the villagers found about what happened from the witnesses.”

_“Never the less the children of mix heritages such as the girl will always retrieve beatings. They will never be accepted by either of their races.”_ Kuromaru’s sole remaining eye looks at her grimly. _“Humans and demons rarely if ever accept the presence of the hanyou. They are looked down upon by their demonic peers for their human blood and humans fear and hate them for what they cannot control.”_

“You scare me by being so sure about that.”

_“It is not that much different from being a wolf-dog hybrid. Hybrids rarely ever get accepted. It takes a deep and caring heart to accept someone of such different races,”_ Kuromaru shakes his head. _“I’m curious as to whether the girl will have much youki.”_ He gets a curious look from his companion. _“Many hanyou rarely if ever are ever a perfect stable version of their mixed heritage. The reason for this is unknown. It is possible that such a union is actually isn’t supposed to happen and their children are proof of that.”_

“What exactly happens with the hanyou?”

_“Mm… well, at one paw there is a possibility that they will simply produce a human with extremely enhanced abilities and senses but rather pathetic youki capabilities. Think a civilian with their chakra.”_ Tsume nods her head in understanding, civilian lack the ability to manipulate their chakra as well as the sufficient amount to safely be a ninja. Rock Lee is an example of someone unable to manipulate their chakra but he is well in the safety range to be a ninja. _“Or they can be wild beasts that will attack everything and anything that enters their territory.”_

“So much like animal,” Tsume concludes bluntly.

_“Much like one,”_ Kuromaru agrees. _“It is possible that the hanyou can retrieve powers from one or both of their parents. Or they can develop powers unique to themselves. However, most hanyou rarely if ever survive their childhood. Demons do not care for the hanyou and will do anything to eliminate them and as we all know, humans are incapable of looking past the surface.”_

“Did the girl not mention that her mother left her with a wolf pack? A wolf demon pack?” Tsume questions as she finishes up, leaving money for her order and leaving the dango shop.

_“Actually, yes… I do not know how to explain that one… It is possible that as a result of being born from one of the Bijuu the child inherited the status and strength from her mother. Resulting in respect and protection from the alpha pair.”_ Kuromaru’s voice expressed his doubts about that reasoning.

“Respect and protection from the alpha pair simply because of who her mother is?” Tsume questions out loud. Both of them shake their head in disagreement with that line. Simply not possible.

_“Perhaps the Bijuu tasked the pack with the job of protecting her child until a suitable age?”_ Kuromaru suggests.

“That is a slightly more acceptable reasoning,” Tsume says before deciding to leave the matter alone for the time being. Now that she has a faint idea of who the child is she must make her decision.

Shun the child or accept her into her clan.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I actually meant to post a chapter on *squints at the calendar* on the first. But as you can see that didn't happen. Sorry! 
> 
> So enjoy the chapter and mark the date for the 8th (roughly) for the next chapter

“Hokage-sama, thank you kindly for taking the time to see us once again,” Matron Kin says with a bow. “Have you made your decision?”

The girl looks at the elderly man, her eyes solemnly serious. What eyes to find on a young one not even nine years old. Has her time with the wolves age her beyond her years or is it because she is half wolf that she is like a strange combination of a child and a woman in her later years?

“I have already decided to accept young Kazama into our village,” he says, looking directly at the young girl in question. “However, due to a complicated problem I was unable-,” he starts before being interrupted.

“To get you accepted into any apartment outside the Inuzuka clan,” Tsume says as she walks into the office. The two visitors turn to look at her while the Hokage smiles at her, realizing exactly what she is here for. “Looks like you're stuck with my family, kid.”

“You mean it?” the girl asks, just barely managing to hold back her excitement. It was to Sarutobi's amusement that he realized that he was seeing a twinge of movement from under the girl's trench coat. It was apparent that her excitement was determined to come out, one way or another.

“Yep. It'd be my honor to accept you into my family, Oretzi-chan.” The girl jumps out of the chair with a cheer and she hugs Tsume. Startled but pleased by her reaction the mother of two ruffles the girl's wild hair, looking at Sarutobi with a smirk. “Looks like I'm responsible for three now,” she comments to him.

“Indeed,” he chuckles before casually glancing at the matron. At one hand she looks pleased that the child has been accepted into the village and yet at the other she looks worried. About what he doesn't know and has that sinking feeling that there is something else lurking about. “I suppose we best get the adoption papers ready for you to sign,” he directs to Tsume.

“So it would,” Tsume looks down at the girl. “Do you wish to take my clan's name?”

“Can I?”

“I wouldn't be asking if I didn't want you to have it,” she tells the girl. She gets a happy squeal and with a wince she takes that as a yes. “Inuzuka Oretzi,” she says out loud to try it. Or-eh-tee, not a bad name despite the fact that she has no idea what it means. “Has a ring to it, don't you think so?” she questions the Hokage.

“Certainly does,” he agrees, his eyes darting down to the girl currently clinging to Tsume. It was amusing that the eight year old girl was perhaps seven inches shy of the woman's height and yet behaving like she was more than half her height. Tsume will not be pleased that her new found daughter will be taller than her - much like Hana. Oh he will love to see that discovery when Oretzi gets older.

“Kuromaru,” Tsume starts when she notices what the Hokage was subtly telling her, “please take Oretzi-chan out to a park or some place.”

_“Why not the compound?”_

“I rather introduce her to the children before they happen upon her,” was Tsume's only answer. Kuromaru nods his head before jerking his head to the door, signaling for Oretzi to follow. She quickly releases Tsume and practically skips out of the office with Kuromaru right by her side. “She's certainly energetic,” she comments when she sees the exasperated look on her companion's face just before he leaves.

“So, where's that paperwork?” she questions before she notices a tired look on the Hokage's face. “What else is there for me to know?” she asks, taking a seat in front of him, keeping the Matron to her right.

~Kazama~

Kuromaru sits near one of the benches, next to the girl who was looking at him expectantly. He endures the stare for as long as he could before finally sighing. _“Why will not you play with the other children?”_

“Matron never let me,” Oretzi answers. “I can hurt people easily,” she explains as if it was a matter of a fact.

_“Just how strong are you?”_ he questions. He gets a halfhearted shrug. He sighs as he drops his head half an inch. _“Do you even want to play?”_

“Of course!” Oretzi pouts at him. “I'm a puppy, Kuromaru!”

_“Somehow I get the impression you would still play even after you grow out of your puppyhood,”_ Kuromaru comments drily, getting a giggle from the girl. He scans the children playing in the park before locating a pink haired girl with green eyes and a blonde girl with blue eyes. _“How about you play with them?”_ he questions, jerking his head in their direction.

Oretzi looks in the direction he indicated before looking at him. “Huh?”

_“You know… play?”_

“I know how to play!”

Kuromaru looks at her oddly, suddenly remembering that the girl grew up for five years with wolf demons. And apparently the Matron never allowed her to play with the other children before. What if her definition of play is different from others? _“Have you ever played with other children?”_ He gets a firm headshake that indicated no so he sighs. So maybe this wasn't a good idea after all. _“I have half the mind to let you play with a litter of puppies,”_ he mutters as he stands.

“There's puppies?” the girl asks as she scrambles to her feet, her eyes eager.

_“You know puppies better than you do children,”_ he comments as he leads her past the girls he had pointed out earlier.

“Wow,” he hears the pink haired girl say, “she looks like Kiba-kun.”

“Do you think she's from the Inuzuka clan?” the blonde asks her friend.

“Maybe?”

He thinks over their conversation as he pauses, his head turning to look at Oretzi. She does look like Kiba, despite her only connection to Hana and Kiba is their father. She could easily pass as Tsume's daughter with their wild hair. He hasn't had a good chance to look at her canines but from what he can see she even has the elongated nails common among the Inuzuka clan members. Her eyes, however, are like Hana, lacking in the slits that can be found in most of the other members. It is like she is a curious blend of Hana and Kiba when it comes to her appearance. _“You sure you do not want to play?”_

“I want to, Kuromaru, but I'll just hurt them…” Oretzi had followed his gaze to the girls again and jerked her face away when she realizes that they're looking back. Kuromaru couldn't help but be amused that she is shy. So he walks around and butts his head against the girl, forcing her to walk towards the two girls. “Kuromaru, no!” Oretzi protests but with one last push she falls onto her knees in front of the two girls with a vivid blush on her tanned face.

“Hi,” the pink haired girl says shyly, waving at the young Oretzi - partially hidden by the blue eyed blonde.

“I'm Yamanaka Ino and this is my friend, Haruno Sakura,” the blonde introduces themselves.

“I'm Ka-,” Oretzi starts before getting nudged by Kuromaru. She looks at him in confusion.

_“Not anymore,”_ he says as a way of explaining when he notices that his one eyed look wasn't coming across properly.

“What?”

He sighs and shakes his head. _“Inuzuka,”_ he tells the girl.

“Oh!” Oretzi exclaims as she thumps her fist into her open palm. “Right. I'm Inuzuka Oretzi!” She smiles shyly at the girls, ducking her head as she lace her fingers together in a stubborn effort to keep from instinctively reaching for her tail. Matron Kin had told her to hide her tail but she never said why.

“Oretzi?” Ino mutters, the name coming out as 'Oh-reh-tee', to the girl's horror.

“No,” she shakes her head, a faint blush appearing on her cheeks. “Or-eh-tee,” the girl repeats slowly.

“Or-eh-tee?” Sakura tries this time. She gets a huge wide grin and it is then they get their first glimpse of the girl's elongated canines. Not even Kiba had fangs like hers!

As if sensing their discomfort Oretzi ducks her head down and mumbles an apology, her black boots scuffing the dirt. Ino was the first one to react by pulling the taller girl into a hug. Oretzi, unused to touch in general when she doesn't initiate it, freezes up. Ino pulls away, her hands on the girl's shoulder, and she eyes her for a long moment. “You're going to be like Sakura-chan, ne?” the blonde questions the brunette.

“I don't understand,” Oretzi tells her, her head tilted to the side just slightly in a manner that reminds the blonde of a dog.

“Don't worry about it, Oretzi-chan,” Ino waves off the question but once again mispronounced the girl's name. She makes to walk back to their game but stopped at the strange whine she heard from the brunette. “Is something wrong Oretzi-chan?”

“My name, you're saying it wrong,” the girl pouts in a manner that is strangely like a puppy dog pout.

“Is it really that bad?”

“It has a different meaning when you say it like that.”

“Really?” Sakura says in surprise. She couldn't remember ever encountering the name before.

“Yah-huh. It's unique to my pack,” Oretzi tells them. “Mama named me as Oretzi, her little savior.”

“But if you say it as 'oh-reh-tee'…?”

“It means destroyer,” she informs them grimly. Ino's eyes go wide in shock as Sakura turns to her.

“You need to learn how to say it right!” Sakura exclaims loudly and Ino starts practicing, mangling the name even more with every repetition if that was possible.

Nearby sat Kuromaru, amused and concerned by the scene. Amused because the pup has the two girls practicing to pronounce her rather odd and interesting name. Concerned because the pup's mother is a demon, a full blooded one. All demons know that there are meanings behind names so for the child to have such an important name with two different meanings - pronunciations be damned - he knew that something must be up.

He'll have to get Tsume to check what the abilities of the Hokou are. Because if the Hokou could predict the future then they need to dedicate as much time as possible to teach the girl everything she might need to save the world - and hopefully not destroy it.

_“Pup,”_ he calls out to the girl, _“I believe that your name is currently out of Ino-chan's ability to pronounce.”_ The girl pouts and whines, getting dual coos from the two girls that has her blushing. _“Do you have any other name that they can use?”_

“Maybe my last name?”

“You don't call friends by their last name!” Ino exclaims loudly with Sakura timidly nodding her head next to the blonde.

“What about my old one?”

“Nope!”

Oretzi stares blankly at the girls before looking at Kuromaru. “I don't have a nickname! Stalks the Night always called me Pup or Oretzi if she's mad at me!”

“Puppy-chan?” Ino tries, considering it as it rolls off her tongue.

“No, not puppy-chan!” Oretzi whines but unfortunately it was too late. Ino had found a name for the wild girl.

“C'mon, puppy-chan! We're playing House.”

“House?” Oretzi forgot about the horrible nickname as she wonders closer to the girls, curious. Eventually, after getting the concept explained to her she was labeled as 'father' and Ino was the 'mother'. Sakura, for some reason Oretzi couldn't fathom, was to be their 'daughter'.

By this point Kuromaru was laughing, loudly and Oretzi kept scowling at the wolfish-dog.

~Kazama~

When Tsume finally arrives in search for Kuromaru and Oretzi she happened onto the scene where Ino, Sakura, and Oretzi are still playing house and Kuromaru is supporting a bump on his head. She questions him about that but gets the silent treatment. Unable to get anything out of him she redirects her attention to the children. She watches Oretzi's interaction with Ino and Sakura, amused by the child's shyness when Ino becomes affectionate towards her.

“Oretzi-chan,” she calls out to the girl when she notes that the pink haired girl is feigning sleep.

“Okaa-san,” Oretzi greets cheerfully, bounding over to her to hug her. Tsume smiles fondly at her, ruffling the wild hair. She wasn't expecting to be called that title any time soon but found that she liked it.

“Did you have fun?”

“Yah-huh. Ino-chan and Sakura-chan are nice,” the girl says cheerfully. Tsume was relieved that the girl had fun.

“Maybe we can arrange for another day for you to play.”

“Aw, we have to go?” Tsume was given the full puppy dog pout and she nearly gave in. Until she remembered why she couldn't.

“I thought you might want to meet your Aneki and Aniki.” She thinks back to the scroll and approximate age and realized that her son is actually younger than Oretzi. “Er, I mean Otouto.”

“Aneki and Aniki?”

She didn't catch the flash of confusion at the words. “No, Aneki and Otouto.”

The girl looks confusedly at the wild woman. She looks at Ino and Sakura who have wandered closer to them. “Do you know what an aneki, aniki, and otouto is?” she asks them.

Ino giggles into her hands while Sakura smiles at the clueless brunette. “It's not a what, it's a 'who',” Sakura tells her. “They mean big sister, big brother, and little brother.”

“Oooh… Like how okaa-san means mother?” she asks the brilliant girl.

“Hai. Like how I called you otou-san and Ino okaa-san,” Sakura explains.

“That makes sense,” Oretzi mutters.

Kuromaru and Tsume were amused by the conversation and at the same time Tsume couldn't help but wonder just what is her daughter's level of skill with their language?

“Hey, puppy-chan,” Ino suddenly says, looking seriously at Oretzi - prompting another whine from the girl. “Can I call you ane-chan?”

“Ane-chan?” It sounded like aneki but without the 'ki' part.

“Same meaning as aneki,” Sakura supplies, looking at her friend in confusion.

“Oh… why?” she directs the question at Ino. Tsume, by this point has chosen to just sit herself and watch this interaction play itself out. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Inoichi and Kizashi approaching them and realizes that they are probably intending to pick up their children.

“Because! You're older than us!” Ino says like it is the most obvious thing in the world. “You can be our big sister! Our ane-chan!”

“You promise not to use puppy-chan ever again?” Oretzi asks warily, hoping to never hear that nickname again.

“Aw but I liked using it. I was gonna call you puppy-ane.”

“Puppy big sister?” Oretzi and Sakura asks her with incredibility

“It could use some work,” Ino admits. They nod their heads in agreement at that. “Please puppy-chan?”

Oretzi shudders at the nickname. “Okay,” she sighs, giving in. “But no one else but you two,” she points a mock stern finger at them in imitation of Ino's father. Not that she ever met him. Ino had told her to do that when she wants to get a point across while they were playing House. “I don't want anyone else to call me puppy-chan. So call me ane-chan around everyone else.” She gives Ino a look, “Please get my name right one day Ino-chan.”

“Hai, ane-chan,” Ino giggles before hugging the taller girl. Sakura giggles and hugs them both.

Sensing the end of that amusing conversation the three parents step forward to retrieve their kids. “Time to go, Oretzi-chan,” Tsume says as she ruffles the girl's hair. “Say goodbye to your sisters.”

“Bye Ino-chan, Sakura-chan,” she tells them, hugging them both individually and left them with a kiss on the forehead.

“Bye Ane-chan!” they call out in chorus before running away with giggles.

Tsume takes Oretzi's hand and Kuromaru walks on the other side, effectively shielding the girl from the people. Instincts drove them to protect the young. “Did you have fun?” Tsume asks Oretzi.

“Hai! Ino-chan is really fun! But she's really bossy too. She says that all okaa-sans act like that but I think it's just her,” she rambles. “But then again Stalks the Night was really strict. She liked her rules and order.” She falls silent as she consider this.

“What about Sakura-chan?” Tsume prompts.

“Saku-chan is really shy,” Oretzi exclaims as she reaches over to touch Kuromaru's fur, running over along his back. “Ino-chan told me that she was bullied before they became friends.” At that information a growl radiates from the trio, the loudest not coming from Kuromaru but from the new addition to their Clan.

Tsume quickly kneels and turns Oretzi to her. She wanted to tell the girl to be careful about how much of her inner beast gets out but instead she gets her first glimpse of the possible doujutsu mentioned in the scroll when she sees the pair of glowing golden eyes. She kneels there, caught in an illusion of slightly younger Sakura crying alone, shunned and bullied because of her large forehead. It became worse when she attempted to hide her forehead behind her bangs until Ino intervened with a red ribbon. Her heart almost broke at the wrenching sobs, the loneliness radiating from the girl.

Until she is bumped by Kuromaru and her eyes finally leaves Oretzi. The scent filling her nose alerts her to the fact that it is her companion and she curls her fingers in his fur. She touches her cheek and it came away wet. Startled she looks at her hand to find that it is wet with tears. “What happened?” she questions softly, confused.

“I'm sorry okaa-san!” Oretzi throws her arms around Tsume's neck. “Matron Kin told me to never look people in the eyes. That I can make them lose their senses!”

Tsume blinks her eyes before looking at the puzzled ninken. “Come, we best get back to the compound. This is not for the public to know,” she finally says as she pries the girl from her neck. She offers her hand to Oretzi in show of no hard feelings. However, she made a note to speak with the Hokage regarding the fact that the suspected doujutsu might have something to do with illusions. She didn't need to look at her daughter's eyes to know that they have returned to their dark brown color. The only thing that she can think of that is remotely similar is the Sharingan with its ability to cast extremely strong genjutsu and create a world within the victim's mind - the Tsukuyomi if she recalls it right.

If Oretzi could develop the doujutsu to whichever path it will go into she may prove useful to the Torture Squad or even the Anbu. She was not pleased with that thought. She would rather have Oretzi developing her skills as a possible hunter than joining something like the Torture squad or the Anbu. She has seen what happened to those who spend their lives torturing people for information, getting tortured. All that blood on them damages them in the end, distorts their sense of being.

She looks at the eight year old and somehow could see her nearly twenty years old. Her eyes blank as she stares at her, old blood and death staining the brunette's hands. How is it any worse than being a typical Shinobi? No, she could not direct the girl down to a different path if she ever choses to serve her village under Ibiki's guidance.

“Okaa-san?” the girl's voice snaps Tsume out of her thoughts. “Who are my aneki and otouto?”

“Your aneki is my daughter, Inuzuka Hana. She's four years older than you and your otouto-kun. She has the Haimaru Sankyodai as her companions,” Tsume explains.

“Haimaru Sankyodai?”

_“They are triplets. The name quite literally translates into The Three Grey Full Circle Brothers,”_ Kuromaru explains.

“Oh…” the girl mutters something that has Tsume and Kuromaru staring at her blankly. “Uh… Stalks the Night told me once that pups that look exactly like one another are good luck.”

“… How did you learn our language, Oretzi-chan?” Tsume finally asks, curious.

“Stalks the Night knew some words. I learned what food, water, eat, sleep meant long before I joined the orphanage. She also taught me some manners.” Oretzi rubs her neck with a sheepish look. “I keep forgetting them though. Wolves have no need for manners. We are what we are.” She tilts her head as she thinks about the pack. “Matron Kin had to put me alone a lot because I keep forgetting my manners.” She didn't notice the spike of aggressiveness from Tsume but she did notice Kuromaru's hackles rising. “Hey, what's wrong?” she asks, running a smoothing hand over the black and grey tone dog.

_“Do not worry,”_ is his only reply, causing her to frown at him. She could sense his anger but after scratching at the spot behind his ear she drops the subject and looks down at the ground.

Tsume was going to let the pup stay quiet until she recalls that there was two parts to her question. “Your otouto,” she starts, catching her newfound daughter's attention once again, “is my son, Inuzuka Kiba. He's actually only a few months younger than you. He has Akamaru has his companion.”

The group were silent for the rest of the trip and Oretzi looked up only when Tsume stops. When she sees the Inuzuka clan mark she reaches instinctively for the necklace in her pocket only to realize that she had given it to the Hokage. She frowns briefly before something dangles in front of her.

Her eyes take a second to focus on it but she almost instantly recognizes it as the necklace her father left her. “Looking for this?” Tsume teases her before giving it over. “Sarutobi-sama gave it to me when he realized he still had it.”

“Thank you, okaa-san.” She smiles as she slips the necklace into her pocket.

_“Why do not you wear it?”_ Kuromaru questions, finally speaks up.

“Matron Kin said I have to earn the right to wear it.” Kuromaru bared his fangs briefly in anger at the elderly woman, wishing she was nearby so he can do something to her for her idiocy. She has limited the pup a great deal with the 'do' and 'do not'.

Tsume is right beside him with that line of thinking so she crouches down to look Oretzi in the eye. “You are no longer under Matron Kin's responsibility. Her rules do not apply here.” She could see the hesitation in the girl despite her words. “You may wear the pendant,” she tells her, “And I wish for you to wear the Inuzuka markings.” She gestures to the red fang-like markings on her own face.

“Really?” the excitement in Oretzi's voice could not be hidden and Kuromaru, standing behind her, could see the subtle movement under the trench coat.

“You are part of my clan now, Oretzi-chan. That means you will be raised like you were never born outside our compound,” she smiles at her as the girl starts to bounce in place. Kuromaru is amused as the movement under the coat becomes just a bit more pronounced. “Now, let's go and meet your kyoudai,” Tsume exclaims as she throws open the doors to the compound.

“Kyoudai?”

_“Your older sister and younger brother,”_ Kuromaru explains before he bounds through the doors, leaving Tsume and Oretzi.

“…Okaa-san?”

“Hai?”

“Aneki and Otouto… they'll accept me… won't they?” Tsume looks at her in surprise. She hadn't expected to meet an insecure side of the girl.

“Your aneki will hit your otouto if he misbehaves,” she tells the girl, not mentioning that Kiba misbehaves quite a lot. “But they will both accept you. Just give them time if they don't outwardly show it.”

“Hai okaa-san.” But it didn't change the quiet reservation that the girl has now fallen into. Tsume simply rests a hand at her back, right between the shoulder blades, and gently leads her into the compound.

~Kazama~

Tsume leads Oretzi into the living room, motioning for her to take a seat on one of the couches and wait for her. Oretzi looks around nervously, her eyes wide as she studies her surroundings. The living room is simple but quite comfortable. The space is furnished with a couch, a loveseat, and a recliner - all of which pressed up against the walls. There is a simple coffee table loaded with books. She picks up one of the books and squints at the title. She couldn't read anything it said but she could tell by the dog eared pages and the underlined sentences that it's well read. She puts the book in her lap, flipping through the pages. She found illustrations of dogs and when she looks closely she sees the bones. Several other illustrations showed organs and such. There was also a page on different breeds.

She was so intent on studying the images that she missed the fact that someone walked into the room until she felt someone standing just a bit to her right, from behind. Looking up from the book caused her to realize that there is an older girl standing at the entrance into the room.

Her long dark brown hair, somehow straightened, were trying to escape the cruel confinement of the low ponytail she had wrangled it into. Her dark brown eyes eerily similar to the dark brown eyes her okaa-san has but she doesn't have the same slits as her. She even has the same red fang marking on her cheeks. Oretzi realizes that whoever this person is, she is part of the Inuzuka clan too.

"Who are you?" the older girl questions, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Oretzi's eyes widen in alarm and she scurries away from the couch, her back rigid as she moves away from the girl. Startled the other girl doesn't move from the entrance, having not expected such a reaction from the smaller girl.

"Hana, don't you dare scare her!" they hear Tsume holler from some part of the main house. Oretzi looks towards the sound, past the older girl, before ducking her head, her bangs covering her face.

Hana, the older girl, studies the smaller girl. She had the appearance of an Inuzuka, with her wild brown hair, elongated nails. She didn't see her canines yet but she can already tell that the girl doesn't have the typical slits in her eyes, much like herself. She compares the girl's wild hair to her brother's and nearly had a laugh as she realizes that the girl's hair trumps his. In fact, it was honestly close to the hairstyle her own mother supports - not that it is really a style.

She looks down when she feels someone brush past her legs and sees it is Kuromaru. The black ninken walks over to the girl and hops onto the couch to lay his large head in her lap, nearly dwarfing her legs. 

"Hello, Kuromaru," Hana greets the ninken. Once she has his attention she raise an eyebrow at him in silent question of what is going on. He just turns his head away from her and nudge the girl's hand, getting an immediate neck scratch.

"Hana-chan, do you know what okaa-chan wanted us for?" she hears her brother asks, with an accompanying questioning bark from Akamaru.

"No clue, otouto-kun," she tells him, affectionately rubbing Akamaru's head.

"Well, c'mon. She said to go to the living room. Don't know why you're standing outside the room like an idiot," he says as he moves to get pass her. She tries to stop him but the stunned look on his face tells her that she didn't succeed and she steps back to let this play out. "Who are you!" he cries in outrage, causing the girl in the living room to try and scramble back. Hana and Kiba stare at the scared girl, unsure how to take her reaction but Kuromaru gave them a one eyed glare that has them ducking their heads in union.

"Kuromaru!" she whines at the large dog, trying to wiggle her way out from underneath him. Except Kuromaru's heavy weight had quite effectively pinned her down.

_"They are your kyoudai, pup,"_ he states calmly.

"But-but," she stutters.

_"No buts,"_ he tells her.

"He doesn't want me here, Kuromaru," she whines softly.

_"Has he said those words?"_

"It was in his tone of voice!"

The two of them begin squabbling over that while Hana and Kiba's mother come up from behind him. She immediately grips them by the back of their necks, causing them to yelp loudly. "What do you think you're doing, scaring your sister!" she demands of them as she marches them into the room and forcing them to sit on the couch opposite of Oretzi and Kuromaru.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's a lot of Japanese words in here (and in the upcoming chapters) so forgive me for any wrong words / phrases. All of my knowledge come from Internet. If you see a mistake, let me know? I'll correct them when I get the chance.
> 
> Anywho, lemme know what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

“Wait, what??” the Inuzuka siblings shout, causing Oretzi to flinch again. Tsume smacks them both on the head, causing Kiba to double over with a whine while Hana rubs the back of her head.

“It’s a valid question okaa-san. I mean, you weren’t pregnant or anything and I highly doubt that even you can give birth to a girl almost in her teens.”

“She’s actually only eight years old,” Tsume corrects. Hana was surprised, she hadn’t expected to see the tall gangly girl to be her otouto-kun’s age.

“But she’s so tall!” Kiba protests, perhaps three inches shorter than the girl truthfully.

“And she might get taller,” Tsume professes as she ruffles the girl’s already wild hair. She gets a whine from the girl as she ducks her head, shielding her hair from further ruffling.“In any case she is your father’s daughter,” she goes on to explain, causing three heads to turn to her.

“My otou-san was your partner?” Oretzi asks bluntly, getting a slight wince from the older woman.

“Hai, he was.”

“Wait, wait,” Hana calls, leaning forward as she studies Oretzi and her mother. “You mean to tell me that otou-san had an affair with someone? He cheated on you?” The anger was just barely audible in Hana’s voice, hinted at by the low growl emanating from her chest.

“No, he didn’t cheat on me…” Tsume turns to look at the girl. “Can you remove your trench coat?”

“But okaa-san…” Oretzi protests weakly, worried about what they would think when they see her tail.

“If they say or do anything I will punish them. You are part of our clan now, Oretzi-chan,” Tsume reassures her. Oretzi nods her head slowly, almost reluctant to accept her words at face value but willing to do what she is told to do.

Kuromaru slides off of Oretzi’s lap and the girl stands to remove the trench coat. The black material slid off her arms and - holding the jacket with one hand - she turns partially to reveal what the coat has been hiding.

Hana and Kiba gape at the slim tail about the length of Oretzi’s arm. Akamaru, looking out from his perch in Kiba’s jacket, sees the tail and hops out of Kiba’s jacket. He bounds over to Oretzi and hops at her. Startled she catches him and looks down at him. He barks a few times at her and she giggles.

“No, I’m not a big she-dog,” Oretzi informs the puppy. “My okaa-san is a wolf demon though.” Akamaru’s eyes widen slightly and he barks something. “I don’t know,” she answers, looking thoughtful as a result of his question.

“Akamaru, come back over here,” Kiba calls for him, unwilling to let him stay so close to the hanyou. What he didn’t expect was for Akamaru to tell him that he likes her.

“So that’s your name?” Oretzi asks the puppy, scratching the top of his head. She gets a confirming bark from him. “Such a cute name!” she hugs him, giggling.

“Wait, so… she’s eight… born from a wolf demon… Ooh, the gestation cycle is different from humans so she was conceived after otou-san left but born before Kiba,” Hana rationalizes, getting a nod from Kuromaru and Tsume and a puzzled look from both Kiba and Oretzi.“Don’t worry about it,” she tells Oretzi and Kiba. Kiba nods his head in acceptance while Oretzi pouts at her. “You’re missing the ears for that to be effective,” she tells the younger girl when she recognizes the puppy dog pout.

Oretzi immediately touches the top of her head with a whine, suddenly looking smaller than before. “I want my ears back,” she whines as she plops down onto the floor. Her tail thumps on the floor in a rhythm that signals her unhappiness of this.

“Wait, what?” the four looks at the newest member of their family.

“Matron Kin. She had her friend hide my ears,” Oretzi explains.

“And he didn’t hide everything else?” Hana questions in disbelief.

“Not the best genjutsu user in the world. Anyone walking near me would have felt my tail, even with a genjutsu cast over it,” Oretzi explains, having had overheard him explain this to the elderly woman. Her tail continues thumping, still signaling her unhappiness over the matter of her missing ears.

“Mm…” Tsume forms the right hand seals and mutters ‘Kai’. There is a small ‘poof’ of smoke that surrounds the young girl.

Coughing and sneezing Oretzi waves her hands to dispel the smoke, revealing her full hanyou form to her new family.

Perched on the top of her head is a pair of black wolf-like ears with white tuffs at the tips. She reaches up and touches them before smiling and hopping up with a cheer. She does a dance that has Tsume and Kuromaru smiling at the display.

In addition to revealing the girl’s ears the dispelling of the genjutsu revealed even more features that were not seen before. Her mostly human visage have now been replaced by a near perfect blend of both heritages. The girl’s canines, both top and bottom, have elongated a bit more than before. Her skin have lightened a shade and they can, with the coat now draped across the back of the couch, see black markings twisting up her right arm, vanishing into the sleeve of the girl’s shirt. When she reached up to touch her ears the shirt had followed up, revealing a pale strip of skin covered with even more dark markings similar to the ones on her arm. The sight of the markings worried Kuromaru the most, having a sense of worry that those markings mean something.

“I got my ears back!” she cheers before hugging Tsume, her tail wagging excitedly. Hana couldn’t hold back the smile at the girl’s antics while Kiba scowls. “Thanks okaa-san!”

“Yeah, things should be interesting with you around,” Hana comments as she eases herself up from the couch, going over to Oretzi who still held Tsume as her tail stills. Tsume pries herself free from Oretzi’s hug and before the girl can do anything Hana scoops her up into a hug. “Welcome to our family, imouto-chan.”

“Imouto-chan?” Oretzi asks in confusion, her voice muffled by Hana’s shoulder.

 _“Similar to otouto. But has the meaning of little sister,”_ Kuromaru explains. He gets an understanding ‘oh’ from the girl before she hugs Hana back with a happy giggle.

The only one who probably wasn’t showing any happiness about this was probably Kiba. He immediately stomped out of the room, almost alone because Akamaru looked back and forth between his master and the strange girl-puppy.

“I’ll see you later, Akamaru,” Oretzi tells him, having shifted her weight just enough to see the white/brown puppy’s actions. The pup barks at her once before running after Kiba. She then shifts her weight to look at Hana, who is still holding her up. “Aneki-chan?” she starts.

“Hai?”

Oretzi just shakes her head and smiles. “I’m glad you’re my ane-chan,” she tells the older girl before hugging her. Hana couldn’t stop the smile that appeared on her face as she hugs her tighter.

“The feeling is mutual, imouto-chan,”Hana whispers, looking at their mother. She could see the proud look on Tsume’s face as she sets her sister down on the floor. “Let’s go and pick out a room for you.”

“Hai ane-chan.”

~Kazama~

Within the month that has passed since Oretzi’s adoption into the clan, Hana has been working with the younger girl to strengthen her skills with the language. In addition to helping her grasp the language she helped with her reading as well. Since Tsume and Kuromaru are often away on missions. Kiba, because of his general dislike for the opposite sex, has been avoiding Oretzi like the plague. Akamaru and the Haimaru Sankyodai, however, enjoyed her company and are often lounging around her or playing with her. The larger dogs, the triplets, were reluctant at first to play rough with her, with their heavier weight but when she proved capable of holding her own with them all gloves were off.

In the span of a month Oretzi’s height now borderlines five feet and with the steady supply of meals she has packed on more weight. In some ways the amount of food she eats reminds Tsume and Hana of the Akimichi clan without the increase in size. If anything Oretzi’s weight gain was a slow uphill battle for the Inuzuka clan once they discovered several malnourishment issues within her. Even now they have to make sure that she takes her pills - something she despises - and not overdo it with her activities.

“Oretzi-kun!” Hana shouts, looking for her little sister. The girl had vanished after breakfast and it seemed like the all of the ninkens have vanished with her. She even whistled for her own companions but none of them answered. “Oretzi!”

When it becomes obvious that her little sister wasn’t anywhere on the compound - for no matter where she was she can always hear someone calling for her - Hana leaves in search for the missing girl. Where she could have gone she had no idea. With her own companions missing as well she decides to trust her nose and see where it leads her.

It doesn’t take long for her track the scent of her sister to a local playground. She was not amused when she found that her companions, the Haimaru Sankyodai, are watching over Oretzi, Akamaru, and several other ninkens. But when she sees that her little sister is playing with two other girls, a blonde and a girl with pink hair, she decides not to be too harsh on her companions.

“So… is there a reason why all of the kennel dogs left the compound?” Hana questions. One of the triplets look at her.

_“When the pup expressed a desire to meet with Yamanaka Ino and Haruno Sakura the pack decided as one to escort the pup and to keep her safe.”_

Hana sighs, leaning back as she considers what she was told. After Oretzi was brought into the family Tsume had sat her down to have a talk with her about her hanyou status. While it is dangerous for her to wonder about with her demonic visage out it was doubly so to try and hide them. So they, as in the Hokage and Tsume, had agreed that it is best she does not try to hide her tail and ears. To never travel alone until she learns how to defend herself.

While she’s not happy that no one told her about going to the park she is glad that her little sister is taking her life seriously. “Next time,” she starts, “I would appreciate being informed of this.”

 _“Our apologies,”_ one of the triplets say to her. Hana simply scratches his head as she keeps her senses on their surroundings, amused by the game the trio of girls are playing.

~Kazama~

“Okaa-san!” Oretzi protests, her arms thrown stubbornly across her chest. The eight years old girl was not happy with the prospect Tsume had proposed to her. Who would?

“Oretzi, you said you want to be a shinobi, right?”

“Hai.”

“Well, you need to go to the academy and in order to attend to the academy we need to get you geared up,” Tsume concludes, getting another protesting pout from her daughter.

“What’s wrong with the way I look now?” Oretzi and Tsume looks at her outfit.

At the moment she is currently clad in shorts that ends just pass her knees - with a large enough opening for her tail - and a short sleeveless shirt that exposes her midriff in a manner too old for her. Apparently the fabrics of the clothes are too restraining for the young girl and she prefers to have as less material on her as possible. Tsume didn’t want to consider what she may have worn while with the wolves, or perhaps the lack of.

“You’re not dressed in Shinobi clothes,” Tsume tells her, gesturing to her own outfit.

Oretzi studies her for a moment before shaking her head. “Nah-huh, those aren’t hanyou friendly.” Tsume crosses her arms stubbornly as she eyes her daughter, who is nearly her own height.

“There’s no shops here that are hanyou friendly,” Tsume reminds her. “Those shorts you’re wearing? We had to modify them. We can do that with the clothes we will buy for you.”

“They’re still not hanyou friendly, okaa-san.”

“What else do we need to consider aside from your tail?” Tsume questions with a sigh.

“My youki would destroy these clothes within a week,” Oretzi answers her, picking at the shirt she is wearing. “I already destroyed half of my wardrobe practicing some of the jutsu Hana-oneesan was working on.”

“You were practicing with Hana-chan?” When Oretzi ducks her head down she has to groan quietly into her hand as she realizes what the girl was doing. “How did you even manage to learn how to mold your chakra?”

“Stalks the Night taught me how to mold my youki,” Oretzi confesses. “But I don’t know how to use my chakra.” Tsume sighs as she runs her hand through her hair, thinking.

“And your youki destroys your clothes?”

“Hai.”

“… Well, I suppose we better go visit the Hokage and see what he thinks we should do. I’m sure Konoha would not appreciate you running around naked,” Tsume says as she turns to walk out of the house, pausing only to grab Oretzi when she tries to sneak away.

“Aw, but okaa-san!” Oretzi tries to protest as she is half carried, half dragged out of the house with Kuromaru joining them at the exit.

 _“Don’t make such a fuss, pup. We’re going to train you to be the best shinobi this village has ever seen,”_ Kuromaru tells her as she crosses her arms stubbornly, still dragging her feet with Tsume holding the collar of her shirt.

“But I don’t want new clothes!”

_“You’re going to need weapons too, pup. What good is a shinobi without weapons?”_

“I thought shinobi uses whatever they get their hands on?”

_“Well, it is good to know how to turn anything in your hands into a weapon. Yet it is still good to learn how to use kunai, shuriken, and wires.”_

“I hate shopping,” is Oretzi’s only response. Kuromaru sniggers as they reached the heart of the problem. The pup’s newfound hatred for shopping, a direct result of Hana’s influence when she took Oretzi shopping for clothes. Needless to say she developed a hatred for shopping and would usually disappear whenever there is any kind of shopping to be done - especially with Hana apparently.

~Kazama~

Sarutobi blinks and rubs the bridge of his nose as he tries to process the information that has been unloaded upon him by Inuzuka Tsume and her daughter, Oretzi. “So… we need to find something that is youki proof?” he questions to confirm this. Oretzi nods her head, sitting in her chair with a solemn look on her face. Once again he was struck with the notion that she is older than her years with such an expression on her face. “I’m not aware if there is anything that can tolerate the punishment the youki can dish out.”

“Er…” the adults and ninken look at the young girl when she made that sound. “There’s a… neutral territory for all demons.” She doesn’t look up from her lap. “It’s dangerous for humans and doubly so for hanyous… but there’s a plant that adapted to the presence of the youki and… well…”

 _“You mean to say that this plant can absorb the youki?”_ Kuromaru asks.

“Not absorb. But it makes it hard to destroy anything made from the plant. If the clothes are treated by the plant it’ll make it difficult for me to destroy them with my youki.”

_“But you said that it’s dangerous for humans and hanyous to go to this area?”_

“Hai.”

Sarutobi sighs and strokes his beard. “I suppose it cannot be helped then. Until we find something that can resist the damaging aspects of your youki we’ll just have to stock up on outfits for you,” he tells her.

“I can ask one of the pack to visit the area,” Oretzi volunteers.

This surprises the adults for they were under the impression that the wolf pack she grew up with had severed all ties with her when they left her at Phoenix. “Pup, didn’t the pack leave you at the orphanage?” Tsume questions her.

“Well, yeah, they did. But I know how to get in touch with them. It’s quite simple really,” Oretzi answers, her face morphing into a thoughtful expression that still made her older than her years.

“What exactly is this method?”

Oretzi smiles at him. “It’s the Howl.”

“The Howl?” they blink at her while Kuromaru nods his head in realization.

“Hai. All wolves know the Howl.” She pauses briefly, crossing her arms as she thinks. “I’ll try getting them tonight,” she mutters softly before staying quiet for the rest of the conversation.

Tsume sighs and tells Kuromaru to take Oretzi home, deciding to stay with the Hokage for the time being and discuss a few things with him.

Oretzi, not really interested in the prospect of listening to their conversation, is eager to leave the Tower. She chatters with Kuromaru as they leave the office and shuts the door behind them to give the adults some privacy.

“Kuromaru, can we go to the park?” Oretzi asks him, bouncing on the balls of her bare feet. Even now, after living with the Inuzuka clan - and her time with Matron Kin - they could not convince the pup to wear shoes or sandals. Spending five years with the wolf demon pack has made it difficult for her to adjust to human civilization.

By all means, so close to winter, she should be feeling the cold and yet she still have a lot of her skin showing compared to other children her age. She constantly runs at a high body temperature but when Hana - expressing concern about when the summer heat comes - mentioned this to her Oretzi said that she never runs too hot during the summer. 

_“I don’t know, pup. Tsume told me to take you home,”_ Kuromaru tells her.

“Aw, Kuromaru,” she pouts.

 _“We are not going to have a repeat of what happened while your mother and I were gone.”_ Oretzi blushes at the reminder of her sister’s concern when she and the pack disappeared from the compound. She had gotten a good lecture for leaving without telling her or one of the adults about where she is going. And while the older dogs are adults they are not responsible for her like her mother or sister is.

“But I wanted to see my imouto-chans,” Oretzi whines, crossing her arms.

 _“There are times I am impressed that you manage to act so much older your age,”_ Kuromaru starts, confusing her into dropping her stance, _“And then you go and act your age.”_

“Uh… thanks?” Oretzi mutters, scratching the back of her head in confusion. Then before she could say anything she is scooped up into a hug that made her shriek in surprise.

“Kid!” she hears a semi-familiar voice exclaim before she gets a hard noogie between her wolf ears.

“GAH!” she protests, struggling to get out of the grasp of her ‘attacker’. “Anko-san!” she protests while Kuromaru, having sensed the approach of the ‘crazy’ snake shinobi, sniggers at the scene.

“I thought I told you to call me Anko!” the woman exclaims as she continues to noogie the girl. That is, until Oretzi somehow manages to rearrange and position herself in a way that enables her to grab Anko’s wrist with her mouth. The tips of her canines just barely piercing the woman’s skin. “Girl, you better not bite. You’re too young to develop a kink.”

This has Kuromaru gaping at the woman, shocked that he would say something like that around her. _“Have you lost your mind?”_

“Most people think I already have,” Anko replies as she flexes her trapped wrist. “You’re going to regret that if you try to bite me,” she warns the girl when she feels the touch of the girl’s fangs. Oretzi starts to say something but whatever she was saying was muffled and Anko winces as she starts to feel the girl’s drool. “Oh for Kami’s- let me go!” She releases the girl, wincing when the girl’s teeth drags across her wrist as gravity pulls her down.

Oretzi coughs and sputters as she moves away from the woman who now has four long scrapes from her teeth. Anko narrows her eyes at the girl who chuckles nervously under the stern look before breaking into a run. Leaving a strange after image in her now vacant spot. Kuromaru blinks, startled at her rapid speed, before following after his young charge with a now irate Anko right behind him.

They chased the young hanyou quite a way across Konoha and they doubted that she would ever stop. That is, until there is a loud cry of pain up ahead that made them run faster than before and when they caught up they found that Oretzi and a boy her age have somehow managed to get themselves stuck, in a large pit. Why the pit was inside Konoha they had no clue but Oretzi was clutching the unconscious boy to her and looking closely at the two children showed that Oretzi has a few scrapes and bumps on her - already healing quite fast thanks to her demonic heritage. The boy - dressed in a hideous orange outfit that looks quite familiar to Anko and Kuromaru - looks far worse than Oretzi. Anko couldn’t get a good look at him but she could see that there is an unhealthy amount of blood on him and he even looks like he has a few broken bones.

“Oretzi-kun, are you okay?” Anko asks, an unnecessary question that would only serve to perhaps make the girl feel better.

“Yeah!” the girl cries back up, “But he’s not okay!” she looked down at the boy in her arms. “He doesn’t feel too good to me!” Anko winces as she took that to mean that he has a fever on top of his injuries.

“How on earth did they get down there? And why the fucking hell is there a pit here?”

“Ooh,” they suddenly hear Oretzi say, “Anko-san said a bad word.” The woman in question blushes as she realizes her mistake and Kuromaru barks with laughter. The woman’s inability to not curse in front of Oretzi has reached legendary proportions and the girl has already earned almost a thousand ryo thanks to Anko. (1)

“Kid, sometimes I wish you didn’t have those dog ears of yours,” Anko sighs.

“They’re not dog ears!” Oretzi protests from below. Anko smirks before crossing her arms as she looks at the ninken next to her.

“How do you suggest we get those two gaki out of there?” she asks.

_“… Kage bunshin?”_

Anko considers it for a moment and looks down the pit for a moment. “That has some merit,” she confesses. She kneels down to feel the edge of the pit, finding it too smooth for it to be made by nature. She gathers some of her chakra to her hand and presses her hand against the smooth wall. Almost immediately she found that her chakra has been dispelled. “If it wasn’t for the fact that this pit was made to keep their victims from using chakra.”

Kuromaru’s eye widen at the implication of that. He goes to the edge and looks down at the pup sitting at the bottom. _“Was the boy already in the pit when you fell in?”_ he asks.

“Hai,” the girl answers.

The ninken looks at Anko who was scowling angrily at nothing.“Once I get my hands on the no good,” she trails off in low mutters before she disappears to get something to help her, leaving Kuromaru to keep the kids company.

“Kuromaru?” he hears Oretzi call out.

_“Hai?”_

“I don’t think I like being trapped,” he could hear the nervous energy in the girl’s voice and realizes belatedly that being stuck in a pit must be like being stuck in a corner or a cage. He looks over the edge of the pit where Oretzi is staring grimly up at the skies above.

_“Anko-san will be back shortly with something to get you and Naruto-kun out of the pit.”_

“Naruto-kun?” Oretzi questions before she looks down at the boy in her arms. She briefly recalls Sarutobi-ojii telling her about a boy her age who is punished for a burden he carries within.“So you’re him,” she mutters as she traces the whisker marks on his cheeks. “Funny… you’re not exactly something I’d imagine to be carrying such a big burden,” she mutters softly as she leans against the wall, closing her eyes for a nap.

~Kazama~

It took Anko and a friend of hers, Yuhi Kurenai, almost an hour to get Oretzi and Naruto out of the pit. By that point Oretzi’s stomach has taken to growling at her since it is now close to lunch time. The second they were out of the pit Naruto’s injuries began to close and Oretzi, having developed a sense of need to protect him, held onto him with a near savage glare of warning for anyone who came too close to them.

“Gaki, shut it,” Anko sighs when she gets a growl. “I care about Naruto, okay?”

“… Someone tried to kill him,” Oretzi mutters as she lets Anko take him away from her.

“What?” Kurenai blinks, her eyes meeting dark brown eyes for the first time.

“There’s a scent clinging to him,” Oretzi expands. “Someone who smells like…” she pauses to consider this. “Steel, ashes, and…oil.”Oretzi tilts her head to the side as she slowly but surely works the scent apart. “The oil smells like… death. Old dead oil that burns the longest.” Anko frowns as she starts to draw conclusion from the girl’s description of the scent. “Oh,” Oretzi blinks, her eyes now sharp and - to Anko’s surprise - a bit of gold flickers through them. “There’s blood.”

“Er, gaki, Naruto’s covered in blood.”

“I don’t mean his. I mean on the steel,” Oretzi tells them to their confusion.

“Say that again?”

“The steel. There’s a smell of blood clinging to it. That means that the person uses the steel a lot to kill. It doesn’t smell like animals though so I think the person is a kenjutsu shinobi user.” Anko frowns as she narrows it down to strictly ANBU members.

“I’m going to have to track that person down later,” Anko mutters softly, thinking about ensuring that no one does something like this ever again.

“Anko-san?” Oretzi grabs the woman’s trench coat. Once she has her attention she frowns. “The smell of ashes… I think the person is a smoker,” she mutters before walking away with Kuromaru.

“She can’t be talking about Sarutobi Asuma,” Kurenai mutters, frowning thoughtfully at the girl’s back.

“There’s a few other smokers in Konoha,” Anko reassures her. “Besides, Asuma knows better than to attack Naruto-kun.” A quick look over Naruto’s prone form confirms that his broken bones have already healed and any open gashes have begun to close. So she decides that for now, instead of taking him to the hospital or the blonde’s apartment she’d take him to her own place. At least then she’d be able to keep an eye on him.

“At the moment only Asuma comes to mind.”

Anko looks at her friend for a long moment before averting her eyes, unwilling to ask the question that was starting to burn at the corner of her mind. No, she didn’t want to know. Not in the stake of her own sanity.

“So… Who was that girl?” Kurenai asks, effectively changing the subject after at least five minutes of a rather awkward silence hovered over them.

“You haven’t met the newest Inuzuka member?” Anko was surprised.

“Should I have?”

Anko sighs. “That was Inuzuka Oretzi - formerly known as Kazama Oretzi, officially adopted into the clan as of two months ago.” Kurenai’s eyebrows raise up in surprise. “As you already saw she’s a hanyou.”

“Dog?” Kurenai asks.

“No,” Anko shakes her head. “Wolf.”

Kurenai’s eyebrow shoots up again. “She’s a wolf hanyou? But they’re rare!” Anko snorted a laugh in agreement. “But why would…”

“That’s a story that not even I know,” Anko interrupts the question. Having asked it several times herself over the last two months. “But whatever the reason Oretzi-kun have already proven to be a rather amusing entertainment for me.”

“You’re hoping that you’ll be her teacher, aren’t you?” Kurenai smirks.

“You would too if you knew what I did.” Kurenai narrows her eyes at her friend, suddenly curious to find out what her friend knew. “C’mon, lemme get the gaki situated and we’ll start talking,” Anko tells her, moving Naruto around in her arms to unlock the door to her apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) One thousand ryō equals 10,000 yen which equals... one hundred dollars. So basically think of it like this. Every time Anko curses Oretzi gets a quarter. So as it stands she earned a hundred US dollars in quarters alone. So that means in about two months alone Anko cursed about... what, four hundred times? (Wowza)
> 
> Please R&R so I know what ya'll think!   
> If anything doesn't make sense lemme know in the comments below. I'd say leave a pm if you want but I don't think that's possible here.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am with the next chapter! And... if there's a few complaints about what happens in this chapter please leave a review or a pm and I'll get to it (either explaining the reason behind it or make some adjustments) Thanks!

The moon has been up for quite some time when Oretzi slipped out of her room, swinging herself onto the roof and moving along it to get away from the residential area of the compound. Once she’s positive that she’s a good distance away without actually leaving the clan’s grounds she climbs to the top of an old ancient tree. Gathering her youki to her throat she takes a second to recall those long nights listening to her pack Howl. Communicating with one another over vast distances. The various packs howling with one another across the lands.

She lifts her face to the moon and join her voice to the subliminal voices in the world, directing her words to one particular pack. She gives her message to the pack, praying that they have joined the Song tonight. Because if no one was awake to hear the Howl then she’ll have to try another night. She’ll have to try again and again until she gets their attention.

“Pup,” she hears a deep masculine voice say and she smiles giddily at the familiar gruff term.

 _“Alpha!”_ she calls cheerfully, fighting the urge to bounce in her place - a bad idea since she’s a good distance from the ground.

“What did you need?” she hears another voice question, recognizing the voice to belong to the Alpha’s mate, Stalks the Night.

 _“Alpha, Prima,”_ she greets both carefully after wrangling her excitement into submission. _“I know I am no longer part of the pack but I have a request to ask of the Lunar Wolves.”_

“Speak and you shall be answered,” she hears the alpha tell her, granting her permission to make her request.

 _“I am in need of the Monkhood plant found only in the Umbra-land,”_ she makes her case - keeping it simple as they have taught her, adjusting herself so that she is straddling the large branch she’s sitting on.

“A dangerous plant in the wrong hands, pup,” the Prima, the alpha’s mate, states drily.

_“I am aware, Prima. But the Monkhood plant is the only thing that will protect the human clothing from falling to pieces whenever I use my youki.”_

She didn’t need to be standing in front of the two alpha wolves to know that they were blinking at the concept of human clothing. “I see… and these… clothing,” she could hear the alpha’s slow hesitation regarding subject, “are important?”

 _“The clothes are like what fur is to you,”_ she explains simply. She had never understood that concept until Hana dragged her to the stores. On most occasions, while she was still staying at the orphanage, she ran around wearing almost nothing - despite Matron Kin’s attempts to ‘civilize’ her.

She could feel the mutual ‘ah-ha’ moment the alpha wolves had. “Very well. Expect the plant within six months.”

_“Thank you, Alpha, Prima.”_

“Live long, pup,” she hears the Prima start.

 _“Die well,”_ she concludes the farewells.

She bows her head as she lets the Howl die away before rubbing her throat. The Howl always take a lot out of her, her body not quite made to handle it despite her dual inheritance. With a yawn she climbs down from her perch and make her way back to her room, almost falling straight onto the bed the second she got inside.

 _“Silly pup,”_ she hears Kuromaru mutter as he hops onto her bed, curling next to her, _“One of these days you’ll learn not to push yourself so hard.”_

“Okay,” she mumbles as she wraps her arms around his neck, partially burying her face in his fur. “Good night…”

_“Good night pup.”_

~Kazama~

“I can’t do it!” Oretzi screams at the top of her lungs, her youki perhaps aiding in that little scream out.

Hana has to cover her sensitive ears at the shout and she winces when she sees what the youki laced shout had done to the landscape. She was just glad they weren’t on Inuzuka training ground or else their mother would have them fix the damages. “Oretzi-kun, getting angry isn’t going to help.”

“Why can’t I touch my chakra? I can feel it but I can’t use it!” the eight year old scowls, plopping down on the grass, her tail beating a pattern on the ground. Her wolf ears twitching with her irritation.

Anko, having raced over to the training ground at the explosion, drops next to the duo - her hand gripping Oretzi’s head. “You mean to tell me that I came all the way here because of you?” The wolf hanyou chuckles nervously at the woman and Hana sighs, rubbing her nose.

“How bad was it?” Hana asks.

“Let’s just say that everyone may have heard this one’s shouting,” Anko tells them and Oretzi sweat-drops with another nervous chuckle.

“Sorry…”

“What seems to be the problem anyway?” Anko asks, deciding that since she’s already here she may as well help out. Besides, she doesn’t want to have to come back when the girl lets out her frustration again. Being a hanyou really doesn’t make it easy for venting one’s frustration as she has discovered several times in the four months since the girl joined Konoha.

“Imouto-chan apparently can’t use her chakra,” Hana explains bluntly, getting a low growl of frustration from the girl.

“… But you can use your youki?” Anko asks in disbelief. She has seen some of the things the girl can do with her youki, in fact - she’s looking at one of those examples. Several of the younger - and surprisingly enough older - trees have been partially uprooted. And the girl apparently hadn’t even used it intentionally!

“Prima taught me how to use it,” is Oretzi’s only response.

“Prima?” Hana and Anko blinks at the girl.

“The Alpha’s mate, Stalks the Night,” Oretzi mutters, already trying to access her chakra again. Anko stays quiet and watch her, sensing the youki and chakra battling it out inside the girl as she reaches for it. She couldn’t feel the chakra but she can feel the youki - a rough sensation similar to bark that seems to grate against her skin. At first the chakra seems to respond but then the youki surges forward instead.Anko winces and covers her face when the youki goes out of control and knocks everyone back.

“Ugh!” Oretzi growls angrily and when Anko can see again she is half amused by the fact that the girl’s shirt has nearly fallen apart now. She wasn’t, however, amused when she realizes that the girl’s demonic features have gotten more pronounced in her frustration. It only lasts for a few seconds before fading away back to her usual mix.

“Okay, while I’m no Hyuuga or Uchiha, I have a decent idea what’s going on,” Anko tells her as she dusts herself off, moving so that she’s sitting right across from the girl, their knees touching.“From what it feels like your youki is overriding your attempts to reach for your chakra. Maybe it’s because you learned to use it first. Or it could be because it’s more potent. I don’t know. But whatever the case is I think the best way for you to learn how to use your chakra is to meditate.”

Anko has to stifle her laughter when Oretzi groans in exasperation at the prospect of meditating. “Do I have to?” she asks.

“Hai. I think you are instinctively reaching for your youki even though you’re trying for your chakra. So by meditating we’ll slowly but surely make your body used to accessing both.”

Oretzi sighs and nods her head in acceptance. “Okay,” she mutters softly. Anko watches her adjust herself, slowly but surely slipping into a trance.

When the girl’s breathing evens out the snake woman blinks in surprise, having not expected for her to reach her inner peace so quickly. She snaps her fingers a few times in front of the girl’s face before whistling, impressed. “Did you teach her how to meditate?” she asks Hana.

“Nope. Apparently the wolves taught her how to meditate when she was growing up with them. She doesn’t do it often,” Hana explains, looking up from the scroll she is reading. “But when she does do it… well, there’s no chances of anyone disturbing her until she comes out of it on her own.”

Anko sighs and rubs her temples. “Okay, when I told her to meditate I didn’t mean for her to go so deep that she won’t be able to hear me.”

“She should still be able to hear you. Just tell her what you want her to do and then sit back,” Hana suggests. Anko sighs and leans forward to whisper her instructions to the girl. After that she moved away and started practicing her taijutsu, moving easily through the katas.

Seconds trickled down into minutes which became hours. Oretzi sat there, in her trance, for almost three hours before Anko or Hana saw any changes in her ability use chakra. As the girl pulls out of her meditation the chakra followed her, obeying her with no interference from her youki.

She manipulates the chakra to her hands, smiling to herself in triumph.

“Great job, gaki. Now you can stop destroying your clothes,” Anko ruffles Oretzi’s hair, smiling at the younger girl.

“Thank you, Anko-sensei,” Oretzi beams cheerfully at the woman who stills when her mind realizes what she has been called. “Anko-san?” This manages to get the woman to snap out of her daze and she mock-glares at the young girl.

“Will you ever call me Anko?”

Oretzi just tilts her head in confusion. “But why, isn’t it rude?”

Anko sighs and throws her arms up in defeat. “I’m going to the dango shop. I need to satisfy my craving,” she says as she walks away.

“Aw, bye Anko-san!” Oretzi says to the woman’s back before jumping onto Hana. “Ane-chan, I’m hungry.” The older girl sighs, lowering the scroll to look at her little sister.

“Then I suppose we best go feed that bottomless pit of yours, ne?” Hana asks, teasing the girl with small pokes to her belly. Getting the giggles she was aiming for she scoops the girl up, despite the fact that Oretzi isn’t that much shorter than herself, and walks off with a whistle and protests from her younger sister.

~Kazama~

Oretzi blinks at the other students, shaking her head when she realizes that she is a bit advanced compare to them. She already knows how to use her chakra, which took her another month of perfecting before she joined the Academy, she has a decent usage of a taijutsu that beats the standard taijutsu the Academy is teaching, and she can already use several high level jutsu techniques- her own sister unaware of this feat.But she found, to her own irritation, that the techniques she picked up are not something she can use without a ninken partner. Well, she can but they’re more affective with one.

As a result she managed to alienate herself from the other students. It doesn’t help that her otouto-kun is in the class too but doesn’t want to be associated with her. Akamaru, unable to be with both his Master and his favorite ‘she-dog’, has to stay with Kiba but every once awhile he would talk with her whenever Kiba gets in trouble with their sensei.

The only ones whom she is actually close to are her imouto-chans, except now they’re ‘rivals’ with each other. A fact that saddens her a great deal when she watches their interactions with one another. Haruno Sakura, still a brilliant girl, has become absorbed in her attempts to win over the attention of a certain emo looking boy with chicken butt hair. Yamanaka Ino didn’t look that absorbed in winning his affections and sometimes Oretzi can see the sadness lingering in the blonde’s eyes, making her wish she could do something to help them. But she didn’t know what to do as an outsider looking in. She can see that Uchiha, the boy whom Sakura-chan is infatuated with, has a cold indifference towards everyone - including their sensei. His attitude left a bitter taste in her mouth, especially when she saw how he is treating her sisters. It made her want to give him such a thrashing he’ll have no idea what to do.

Not even six whole months have passed since Oretzi met Sakura and Ino and it broke her heart to see her sisters ‘fighting’ over the Uchiha boy. Is it really fighting if Ino-chan isn’t really fighting?

Aside from the problems going on between her little sisters she also began to be friends with Uzumaki Naruto, remembering him from the pit. Of course, she found out the hard way that she rather liked him better when he was unconscious. Why? Because all of his shouting and pranks grates on her ears, all four of them, and his attitude often causes Iruka-sensei to use the ‘Big-Head’ jutsu - which includes a bit of shouting and tends to make her ears ring as a result. Despite the pain that comes with associating herself with him she can see pass the cheerful mask and find the boy looking for attention, love, and family.

As a result she has come to see him as her otouto-kun, adopting a protective attitude around him. Except for when he pulls a prank. That’s when she just sits back and let him get the punishment Iruka-sensei dishes out on him. Afterwards she would drag him home to the Inuzuka compound for dinner - often getting a gruff complaint from Kiba who gets cuffed by Hana.

In any case, Oretzi is bored in class, on the verge of falling asleep as Iruka-sensei drones on about using Henge no jutsu and a Bunshin no jutsu in junction with one another to produce the illusion of having multiple different people in the area when really it’s just one person. That is, until a kunai is thrown at her and she ducks to avoid it.

“Now that I have your attention, Oretzi-chan, do you mind demonstrating the lesson for the class?” Iruka questions her, with a tick just about his left eyebrow. With a reluctant sigh she leaves her seat and goes down to the front. She eyes him for a moment before her hands fly into a few hand seals, too fast for anyone to catch.

A cloud of smoke obscure their visions of both their sensei and Oretzi. But when the smoke finally did enable to see them the students all dropped their jaws in shock. Standing before them are the first four Hokage. Senju Hashirama, his brother Senju Tobirama, Sarutobi Hiruzen, and Namikaze Minato. As well as the members of the Sannin, Jiraiya the Gama Sannin, Tsunade the Slug-hime, and Orochimaru the Snake Sennin.

Iruka stares at the seven figureheads of Konoha history and notices with great pleasure that he could not tell the differences between any of them. They all look just like the illustrations done on each respective person. In addition, the henge for the Sandaime Hokage was not of the old man currently sitting in his office but of the ‘Professor’ - the young powerful shinobi in his prime. The same can be said of the Sannin - each of them look of the age they were in their prime, attired in the outfits they had worn while part of the Second Shinobi World War.

However, when he notices that he is missing a student he studies the seven figure heads in an attempt to find her. “Oretzi-chan, dismiss the jutsu now,” he orders the Inuzuka girl.

The henged bunshins look at him before vanishing in the cloud of smoke. Coughing and waving his hand he clears the smoke only to realize that his pupil is missing. He immediately roars in outrage and storms out of the classroom to have a fellow Chunin instructor go and find her.

The second the door closes behind him the class burst into laughter as Oretzi shakes her head. She had been sitting behind Iruka-sensei since creating and henging the bunshins into the Hokage and Sannin. She hadn’t even made any attempt to hide herself, except maybe suppressing her chakra and youki to the point of being invisible.

“I’m so going to be in trouble, aren’t I?” she asks her fellow students, which only provoked them into even more laughs. She sighs and nods her head. “Yeah…” She slips off the desk and goes to her seat, picking up Akamaru when she finds him there. Ino, her desk mate, was still giggling at what happened and she waits for her imouto-chan to breathe again.

“That was so funny! And incredibly awesome, ane-chan,” Ino exclaims, her giggles finally tittering off. “But how were you able to do something like that without practice?”

“Ino-chan, don’t you practice at home?” Oretzi rubs her face. “The Henge no jutsu and the Bunshin no jutsu was given to us a few weeks ago. The concept of combining the two jutsu isn’t hard. In fact, by using the smoke created by using the Bunshin no jutsu you can henge them into something else.”

“Like what you did?”

“Yep.”

Ino could only stare at Oretzi in awe before giggling. Akamaru barks something at them and the Inuzuka girl sighs at him. “That’s terribly rude, Akamaru.” The puppy barks something else. “I don’t care what Kiba says, it’s still rude.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that your giggles are really loud and like a banshee,” Oretzi translates, provoking Ino’s immediate ire. The wolf hanyou quickly moves Akamaru out of reach of the angered blonde. “He also said that Kiba is the one who said it first and also calls Sakura-chan a pink banshee.” She has to put a hand on Ino’s shoulder to keep her from jumping out of her seat to go and hit Kiba for his rude remarks. She turns her attention to the puppy in her lap who has pressed his back fully against her stomach in alarm at Ino’s ire. “Now you see why you shouldn’t be rude?” She gets a low acknowledging whine from him. “What do you say?”

Akamaru hops from her lap to Ino and bumps his cold nose against Ino, getting a low ‘ew’ from the blonde. Then he quickly licks her cheek before retreating to a safe distance, and just in time because Ino exploded with a loud ‘EW!’ and screeched at the pup’s form.

Oretzi laughs, muffling it with her hands, and it takes Ino punching her in the arm for her to finally calm down. “Sorry. He was just saying sorry for his rude words,” Oretzi finally tells her.

“But he licked me!” Ino protests.

“He’s a dog, Ino-chan. He can’t exactly express his thoughts in our language yet. Not like Kuromaru or the Haimaru Sankyodai.” Ino nods her head, aware of Kuromaru’s ability to speak.

She looks up when the door slams open and Iruka-sensei practically stomps his way back inside. His anger almost tangible around him.“Okay class, since Inuzuka Oretzi has decided to ditch-,” he starts to say before the class as a whole burst into laughter and Oretzi waves her hand for him to see her.“What the-!” Oretzi ducks her head as he begins to berate her.

“Hey!” Naruto shouts. “She didn’t even leave the classroom! She was behind you the entire time!”

Iruka pauses and gives Oretzi a long look that almost has the girl slinking down in her seat. He then nods his head as he goes to pick up the text book. “Inuzuka Oretzi,” Iruka starts, causing her to look at him, “please stay after class.”

She gulps and nod her head in understanding, thinking she was in trouble for something she didn’t really do. Ino pats her friend’s shoulder as the girl slinks even lower in her seat, her ears almost flat against her skull.

~Kazama~

The class has left the room and Oretzi has to fight the urge to dart from the room as Iruka-sensei stares her down for what seems like hours. But probably was only minutes. When the scarred man sighs and walks up to her she is sure that she is going to be reprimanded.

Yet to her surprise he simply places a sheet of paper in front of her. “You have thirty minutes to complete the exam,” he tells her simply before walking away. Startled by the suddenness of the whole thing Oretzi flips the paper over and after a brief read-through she starts writing down the answers.

Fifteen minutes passed before time was up she was done with the test and she flips it over to signal it. “Impressive,” Iruka mutters, thinking that must be the fastest exam ever taken by a student. Oretzi wanted to leave but she had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t done with her yet so she stayed there, fidgeting in her seat. “Okay, you’ve already demonstrated your skills with the Bunshin no jutsu and the Henge no jutsu,” she overhears him mutter before gesturing for her to follow him.

“You have ten kunai,” he instructs her and then gestures at the targets hidden in the training ground. “You have five minutes to eliminate the seven targets with the red X marks.” Oretzi nods, her eyes already scanning the grounds for her targets. “Begin!”

Iruka stumbles back when Oretzi takes off, her chakra pooling in her legs to boost her speed - not that she really needed it. He shades his eyes as he watches her dart through the trees and then felt the release of chakra in the first of seven targets. He glances at the time and wrote down the time next to the corresponding target on his clipboard. He was impressed that the girl was able to move and locate the targets so quickly. She had the makings of Hunter or an ANBU.

By the time she had eliminated all of the marked targets only a minute and a half had passed, leaving Iruka with the impression that this girl should’ve already been a genin already. When Oretzi drops in from a tree she smiles up at the older man, her tail wagging in such a manner that he’s reminded of a puppy waiting praise. He also realizes that the girl only used five of her ten kunai - which meant that she did not spend her tools recklessly, conserving them and using them with different reasons. “Well… I think we have another genius,” he mutters as he walks away. “Come along, Inuzuka-chan. And good work with the targets.” If he had looked back he would have seen the giddy bounce in Oretzi’s walk as she trots after him, almost humming under her breath.

Soon she finds herself in a new training ground and when she sees anunfamiliar chunin instructor she warily falls into a neutral fighting stance. Not quite the taijutsu style she had learned by watching Hana but not the Academy’s taijutsu. Something that was ingrained in her blood. It could be mistaken for the Inuzuka taijutsu style but her style is relies mostly on speed and strength rather than hit-and-run tactics. The speed to strike her opponents before they can react and the strength to take them down with one or two blows. It doesn’t even rely on stealth as most would assume but on endurance.

“Inuzuka-chan, this is Kohaku. Your goal is to disarm him and render him incapable of any further action.”

“Er…” Oretzi didn’t know how to phrase her question. “When you say incapable…”

“… In simplest words I want you to make a killing blow. Without actually killing him.” Oretzi nods her head in understanding as she recalls the anatomy lessons from last week. The best places to land a fatal blow or to put her victim in a near death state. “Ready?” The chunin, Kohaku, and Oretzi stare each other down, both of them in their respective taijutsu styles. “Fight!”

The wolf hanyou lunges forward, leaving deep gouges in the dirt as she runs on all four. At the last possible second she jumps up and as gravity takes over her again she comes down with an ax kick - prompting the young man to either dodge or block her.

Assuming that there wouldn’t be a lot of power behind the kick he crosses his arms just as the girl’s leg nears him. However the force of the kick overwhelms his lax defense and he is sent sprawling to the ground as Oretzi lands on the balls of her bare feet. She flexes her fingers for a second before lunging again at the man once he has recovered.

No matter what style he used and what move he could make the girl seemed like she was several steps ahead of him. Ducking or dodging his attacks and what little attacks she did take struck him in places that made it harder for him to focus one hundred percent on the fight. As if the girl had purposely hit him in places so that he would tire himself out - the pain from his various bruises and possibly fractured bones driving him to distraction.

Oretzi darts in low and before his brain has the chance to register this she kicks him high up into the air before following. She delivers several hard blows that slams him back to the ground and she lands with her feet at the sides of his chest. (1)

Dark brown eyes study him before she drops to her knees and touches his throat with the tip of her elongated nails/claws - looking up at Iruka-sensei when he starts to clap. “Well done, Inuzuka-chan. Well done,” he praises her. She beams at him before moving off of the unconscious form of the chunin. Holding her claws to his neck hadn’t been necessary since he had been knocked out but her instincts had told her that he hadn’t been incapacitated yet. “Let’s see… Written exam - check,” she hears him say and she watches him out of curiosity as he checks off a list on his clipboard. “Weaponry - check. Taijutsu - check. Ninjutsu - check.” He nods to himself and she has the vaguest feeling that she needs to get ready.

She barely manages to catch the hand seals but when she finds her world twisting and the children from the orphanage mocking her, calling her demon and such. Even when she saved one of them from being used as a man’s personal sex toy she was still mocked. She shakes her head and makes to dispel the illusion until she hears a savage growl that sounds too familiar.

Her body tenses as she looks towards the source and she falls on her butt as she stares at the dark brown furred wolf. The fur matted with blood, flat against the wolf’s nearly skeletal body, interlocked fangs bared at her with a malicious growl. _“Soon,”_ the raspy nails on board voice chuckles as a chill goes down her back. _“I will dye your world RED!”_ She makes the right hand seal to dispel the genjutsu as the wolf walks closer to her, his rank rotting breath wafting over her sensitive nose. _“Soon, little hanyou, you will destroy your own world. My Oretzi of Light!”_

The genjutsu fades away and she sits there, her body cold as her mind absorbs what just happened. She looks at Iruka’s startled face and realizes that the wolf had not been part of his genjutsu - which means… She didn’t want to think about what it meant.

“What,” Iruka starts to ask before getting caught in the brief glow of golden eyes.

Blinking his eyes he rubs the corners with a hand before shaking his head. “Genjutsu - check.” Oretzi frowns at him, curious as to what he is doing. Written exam? Weaponry? Ninjutsu? Taijutsu? And now genjutsu? What is he testing for?

She follows him back into the classroom and hops onto a nearby desk, swinging her legs as she watches him rumble through his things before smiling in triumph. He walks over to her and when he sees that he has her full attention he does a half bow as he offers the item in his hand. She instinctively puts her hands out for it and when she feels the strange feel of unfamiliar cloth she pulls her hands close.

Dark brown eyes widen in surprise as she realizes what exactly she is looking at. It is the Konoha hiati-ate. She looks at the man in shock. “This - Does this mean I-,” she starts before gets a ruffle that has her whining as she tries to straighten her hair.

“Welcome to the Shinobi world,” is Iruka’s simple but efficient answer for the girl. He smiles at her as she ties the hiati-ate on properly, beaming at the man. “Now listen. Since you’re graduating ahead of schedule you are to report to the Sandaime Hokage tomorrow at eight.” Oretzi nods her head in understanding. “Good, now get,” he tells her cheerfully, getting a quick hug from the eight year old before she runs out of the room.

~Kazama~

Oretzi hums happily to herself as she walks down Konoha’s street, almost bouncing in her excitement. It hadn’t taken her long, she realizes, to become a shinobi thanks to the combined efforts of the Lunar Wolves, her okaa-san, her ane-chan, and Anko-san. She’s a shinobi now, just like her otou-san. She couldn’t hide her giddiness and even if she could her tail would have given it all away with its wagging.

Half way home she stops, her nose picking up the scent of blood.

She tilts her head slightly to the right as she contemplates the smell. She could smell an underlying scent beneath the overpowering blood - possibly the person whose blood has been split. With a frown she follows the scent into a nearby alley, cautiously stepping into the shadowy path. She couldn’t hear anyone in the alley, no distinct steps or presences. But her nose told her that there is someone already there.

She pauses to pull out a kunai - a practice one nonetheless but in her hands she can probably turn it into a weapon - before continuing to where she can scent the blood. It was mildly disturbing for the young girl to be in the dark alley with someone watching over her. She couldn’t tell if the person was watching her out of interest for her wellbeing or with malicious intent. When her nose catches the scent again her morals wins and she ignores her instincts yammering at her.

Perhaps halfway into the alley Oretzi finds the source to be an unconscious Uzumaki Naruto with more than a few injuries and several weaponry - such as kunai and shuriken - left in various places designed to make removing them painful for the blonde boy. She could also tell that some of them have been attempted but she can imagine that he passed out before he could fully remove them. Red youki dances over his skin and as she narrows her eyes, squinting at the amount of blood that is pooling underneath him and around her bare feet. Too much to be safe.

She kneels next to him and when she reaches out to remove one of the kunai the red youki lashes out against her, leaving a long chakra burn along her hand and wrist. “Shut up,” she hisses lowly, “I’m not here to hurt him. I’m trying to help.” The youki, dancing menacingly over the blonde’s skin, seems to pause before retreating to his stomach before vanishing altogether. She takes that as a sign to continue and she grabs one of the nearest kunai. Naruto groans, causing her to spare him a look in concern. “I’m sorry Naru-kun,” she mutters before she yanks the weapon free with a loud squelch that would make any civilian blanch or puke.

Naruto woke up with a scream at the pain but couldn’t move into an upright position because of Oretzi pressing a firm hand to his chest. She removes the other seven kunai and shuriken and by the time she was done he had passed out again from the pain overload. Already she can see the red youki healing the injuries, leaving no trace of his injuries. “One of these days they’re going to kill him,” Oretzi mutters as she pulls him onto her back for a piggy back ride. She could sense the agreement from the source of the red youki before it vanishes back into Naruto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Naruto has been beaten up again by someone and Oretzi has swoop in with a rescue. Honestly? I probably should've made her a neko with the way she keeps sticking her nose into danger. Oh well.
> 
> (1) I know she seems overpowered but there's a few things I need to make clear. The chuunin had underestimated her because she is so young. Assuming that he never met her before and is only partially aware of her he probably is assuming that she isn't a threat with only two months worth of Academy training.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! R&R!


	5. Chapter 5

Shaking her head she makes to leave the alley only to stop when she realizes that both exits have been blocked by two older shinobi. She sniffs as she readjusts herself to have both shinobi in her line of vision. She doesn’t recognize them but the KI radiating off of them was enough to inform her that she shouldn’t stay there a second longer.

“You little brat,” the shinobi that was behind her snarls as he removes a kunai from his pouch. “The demon bastard was almost dead and you saved him.” Her ears twitch as she tries to think about what she should do.

“Kovu, silence,” says the other shinobi as he unfurls a scroll. “Your mouth is going to get you killed one of these days.” He bites his thumb and uses the blood to smear it on the scroll, summoning a short sword about the length of his arm. Oretzi frowns as she recognizes the scent of steel and old dried blood. One of the scent of blood also happened to belong to Naruto. She racks her brain for something can help her get out of the situation she is in but when she comes up blank she looks between the two shinobi again.

With no other choice Oretzi sets Naruto down again and drops into a stance with a savage growl, already drawing up all of her youki. The white youki condensing into the snarling wolf with five tails before forming something similar to a thin layer of second skin - giving her a look of a bristling look as the youki shapes into a wolf face and raised hackles along her neck.

The two shinobi - however - are forced to step back because of the intense KI rolling off her lithe form before they drop into a fighting stance.

Oretzi could sense them as she stays there, tensed and hopefully ready for their first attack. The one called Kovu lunges first and she ducks under his swing before she throws an elbow at his midsection. The simple tap fueled by her youki threw him back and burned him. She turns her attention back to the other shinobi, jumping back just in time to avoid getting her head lobbed off by his sword.

“Another demon!” the man mutters, his breath wafting over her nose - causing her to screw her face up in disgust. The man smelled like he had too much to drink as well as the rank smell of too many cigarettes. It’s like that other man - the one with a well-trimmed beard and an ever present cigarette dangling from his mouth. At least Sarutobi-sama’s pipe doesn’t smell so awful.

“And what of it!” she snarls at him, her voice distorted partially by the youki concentration. The man doesn’t answer her but rather renewed his efforts to kill her. The KI that radiated off his lanky form wasn’t quite of the same level as her own but she knew that if she wasn’t careful he’ll put her down like a pitiful dog. The thought of that made her growl savagely and she lunges forward.

The man cuts her in half before cursing when the girl explodes, throwing him back. Oretzi appears behind him and kicks him high where a second Oretzi meets him with a powerful ax kick. He poofs and the girl hisses in outrage as she starts to fall back the ground. Before she lands though she is slashed at, getting a long gash along her arm before she disappears in a puff of smoke. The man curses again as he looks around for the girl. He is kicked forward and he stumbles in his attempt to keep his balance.

Oretzi stays crouched with him in plain view, her tail helping her keep her balance. She couldn’t keep up the steady outpour of youki forever and those few hits she got in wasn’t enough to put him down. She had to admit that she was out of her leagues in this fight. The other shinobi was bound to get up soon and then she had to worry about two instead of one.

Her youki covered claws twitches as she tries to think of a plan, unsure of what to do in order to come out of this fight with her life intact still.

Just like she predicted the shinobi - Kovu - picks himself up with a wince and joined in the fight, making it harder for her to keep up her defense. Her limited arsenal hindered her a great deal and the burns from her youki was starting to get to her. She couldn’t last much longer, that much she knew. Already she can feel her body starting to crash from the youki.

She gathers the youki in her mouth, her body tense as she watches them approach her with cocky smirks on their face. She opens her mouth and lets forth a loud angry roar that throws everything in front of her back - in the same manner that happened when she shouted her frustrations several months ago.

Without waiting for them to recover she ungracefully grabs her unconscious friend and darts out of the alley - her heart and head pounding a mean beat as she weaves through the afternoon crowd, unmindful of the fact that she’s bleeding and jostling into random strangers.

~Kazama~

Oretzi whines lowly as she is slammed into a wall, her friend falling out of her arms as her pursuers finally catch up to them in the five-ten minute chase. Her head is pounding angrily now, throbbing painfully and the punch she just retrieved only added to the pain. She instinctively curls into a ball as her attackers kick and punch her exhausted body.

Then one of her attackers screams in pain and the other curses - prompting her to look from the safety of her arms to find that Kuromaru has one of the Shinobi pinned down. His teeth tearing into the man’s arm. She looks for the other man to find him squaring down with - she blinks her eyes, doubting what she saw - her mother.

She pushes herself upright in amazement as she watches her okaa-san fight with the kenjutsu shinobi until she senses a familiar presence. She looks to her left to find that Mitarashi Anko has just arrived at the scene. “Anko-san!” she whispers, her voice still raw from the youki charged roar.

“Gaki!” Anko looks her over before nodding her head in satisfaction. “Stay here!” Without checking to make sure that her order would be followed Anko first cuffs the shinobi Kuromaru has pinned down - chakra cuffs to ensure that he doesn’t disappear using a jutsu - before she joins Tsume’s side. The two Jonins were quickly able to bring down the ANBU, especially with Kuromaru’s help.

He was quickly cuffed and Tsume scoops up her daughter in a tight hug. “Thank Kami-sama you’re okay,” the older Inuzuka woman mutters as she hugs her battered daughter. “What on earth were you doing out here?” Tsume questions her.

“Naru-kun. They tried to kill him again.”

“And you interfered?”

“Not on purpose,” Oretzi mutters, ducking her head. “All I did was followed my nose. I tried to take him back to the compound but they cornered us.” Tsume sighs and strokes the girl’s face, noticing that she has bruises and cuts on her face and arms.

“Well, you did the right thing, using your youki and running when you did,” Tsume tells the girl, getting a tired smile from her.

“Okaa-san,” Oretzi mumbles softly. “The one with the sword,” she whispers, “he’s the one with the steel, ashes, and oil scent.” Tsume looked at her daughter in confusion but the soft curse from Anko told her that the snake woman knew just what the girl meant. “Kovu, the other one… he called Naruto a demon…”

She could tell that the girl is exhausted and fighting herself to stay conscious a moment longer. “Sleep, you’re safe now,” she tells her daughter. The hanyou nods her head before resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. Soon Oretzi’s breathing has evened out and as she studies her daughter she realizes that she has yet to give her daughter the Inuzuka markings - something she will have to rectify soon. Tsume looks at Anko who is scowling at the two men in anger. “Do you want to explain to me what my daughter meant with that scent comment?”

Anko sighs and looks at the clan head. “About four months ago Uzumaki Naruto was attacked and left in a pit with chakra disruption seals on the walls. Inuzuka Oretzi fell into this pit and we found them before Naruto-kun could die from extreme blood loss and infection,” Anko tells her. “In addition to finding him, Oretzi-chan was able to scent his attacker and break it down for us to search for him.”

“And… you mean to tell me that in the four months since the attack, Naruto’s assailants were not caught?”

Anko kneels next to the man who had wielded the short sword and tilts his head back so she can look at him. “According to the records this one was out on a mission roughly an hour before Naruto’s discovery. I only imagine that he just now returned,” the snake woman says as a way of explaining. She roughly pushes him away from her, disgusted by the fact that he tried to hurt two innocent children. She quickly seize both of her hostages and - with one last look to Oretzi and Naruto - she shunshin away with them.

 _“Tsume, we best get Naruto and Oretzi back to the compound,”_ Kuromaru speaks up, interrupting whatever else his human companion was going to say. _“Oretzi’s injuries are not closing and I don’t think she would be pleased to know that we allowed Naruto to return to his apartment instead of taking him back with us.”_

Tsume sighs in aggravation, her head thrown back as she thinks. Kuromaru had a valid point regarding the fact that her daughter would be upset about that. It doesn’t change that having Naruto in the compound will bring nothing but trouble for the clan because of the laws preventing anyone from adopting the boy. The laws were created to prevent Danz­o from attempting to adopt the boy in the sole intent to turn him into an emotionless killing machine. Downside is that it means that he is forced to endure the anger, the pain, and the outrage of everyone in this village alone without the protection a loving family can give him.

Anko is perhaps one of the few that knows his pain simply because she had been his guardian - watching over him from a distance since she couldn’t stay by his side like she wanted to. It’s also possible that because of who her sensei was the whole of Konoha have branded her as a ‘at risk’ danger to the entirety of the village.

“Let’s go home,” she finally says. She creates a kage bunshin and picks up her daughter carefully - mindful of her persistent injuries. She waits for her bunshin to pick up Naruto before she leaves for the compound.

Kuromaru makes to follow his companion but stops when he notices the pup’s scent concentrated in a spot. Curious he goes over to it where he finds a hiati-ate lying in a shadowed area. Surprised to find that the pup’s scent - a deep forest scent with an underlying hint of fur - clinging to the black fabric of the hiati-ate he picks it up before heading for the compound. The pup can explain the reason behind this whenever she wakes up, he reasons.

~Kazama~

Oretzi groans softly under her breath as she stirs, a deep underlying ache lingering in her joints. “I overdid it with the youki,” she mutters softly as she ease herself up into an upright position. She rubs at each aching spot before realizing something. She yanks up her shirt and stares at the long thin scar stretching from her right bottom most rib to an inch above her navel. A gift from the sword fighter. He had caught her on the stomach - she recalls - just before she got slammed into a wall by Kovu’s kick. The fact that it’s a scar now told her that because she overdid it with the youki her body couldn’t regenerate fast enough to keep it from becoming a scar.

She does a quick check over her body before coming to the conclusion that aside from that one scar she came out of the fight with almost nothing to show for it. Because it has been said and done she decides to put it out of her mind before she realizes that she might be late.

With a yelp she jumps out of bed and runs for the bathroom to shower and then get dress. By the time she is running for the door she was dressed in a loose outfit that consists of nearly tattered shorts - purchased already like that - and a shirt cut in a way that allows maximum arm movements. On her hands is a pair of fingerless gloves - a gift from Hana for beginning the Academy - and bandages wrapped around her forearms, stopping at her elbows. Except for her right arm, the bandages continue until they disappear under the shirt.

She jumps down the stairs and almost run into her mother in the hallway by the kitchen. “Hey, Oretzi-chan, where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“I have to report to Hokage-sama!” Oretzi says with panic, sliding past her mother and almost out of the door.

 _“Why?”_ Kuromaru questions in confusion with Tsume right beside him in that.

Oretzi’s eyes widen as she recalled something and her hand flies up to her forehead. “Aw man, not even one day and I already lost it?” Oretzi exclaims as she turns tail and runs back to her room.

Hana, walking down the stairs, has to jump out of the way when the blur that is her little sister runs up the stairs and nearly threaten to knock her off balance. She stares after her sister’s back before looking at her mother in confusion. “Do I want to know?” she asks.

“Apparently your imouto-chan is late for something,” Tsume answers with a shrug as she disappears into the kitchen to make her daughters something before they disappear for their respective days. Kuromaru thinks about how Oretzi’s hand had flown up to her forehead and leaves the hallway to retrieve something.

“Nani! Where is it?!” the two Inuzuka ladies hear Oretzi screech from her bedroom.

“It’s too early for her to be acting this crazy,” Hana yawns in a manner similar to a dog coupled with a slight curl of her tongue.

“Agreed,” Tsume mutters, looking at the ceiling in concern. The pup rarely if ever act like this so for her to be behaving like so was a bit worrying. “At least she’s not suffering too much from yesterday’s events.”

Hana reluctantly nods her head in agreement. She had seen the shape her sister was in and had to do some patchwork to stem the bleeding. It took maybe an hour or two for her sister’s healing factor to kick in - something Tsume rationalizes to be because of the overuse of youki. As a result the less serious injuries closed almost instantly but the larger ones - such as a fractured ribs and a broken arm, as well as a few cuts made by a sword - took longer to heal despite being set and bandaged.

“Okaa-san! Ane-chan!” they hear Oretzi shout as she runs down the stairs. “Have you seen my hiati-ate!”

“Hiati-ate?” they say in union, staring at the young hanyou in shock.

“You mean,” Hana starts in disbelief.

“You graduated?” Tsume’s face was almost comical with the way her jaw was dropped and her eyes wide.

Kuromaru chose that time to return with a hiati-ate dangling from his mouth, a corner of the black partially ruined cloth clutched by his teeth. Oretzi recognizes the item and shouts in glee at finding her missing hiati-ate, jumping onto the ninken. “You found it Kuromaru!” she cheers as she retrieves it from him. She frowns at the state the cloth is in, realizing that she’ll have to treat it to the Monkhood plant as well when it comes in. “Bye!” the girl calls out before running out of the compound without another word.

“She graduated already?” Tsume repeats, her youngest daughter already gone from the house. “How did she even manage that?!”

“Well… Uchiha Itachi graduated from the Academy when he was her age I think,” Hana recalls, getting a warning look from her mother as a result. She shrugs her shoulders, deciding to keep her mouth shut.

“How are we supposed to keep her safe if she’s out on missions?”

“Okaa-san,” Hana sighs as her mother turns to her, “if she managed to graduate from the Academy then I think she’ll be capable of protecting herself.”

“It’s not quite the same,” Tsume sighs, rubbing her face as she thinks about what she’ll need to do in order to keep her daughter safe. She already tried pairing her daughter with one of the dogs, young or experienced. But none of them could form a bond with her despite her ability to interact with them. She knows that the girl has Inuzuka blood in her, thanks to her father, and the pup has been accepted by the pack. Yet for some odd reason none of the dogs felt drawn to the pup and vice versa. “I’d feel better if she had a companion,” the older woman sighs reluctantly.

“Don’t worry, okaa-san. Hokage-sama wouldn’t put her on the field without a good sensei,” Hana reassures her.

“I know that,” Tsume sighs before she looks at Kuromaru. He takes one look at her before trotting out of the door without another word. “Remind me later to get the pup taken for her markings soon,” Tsume tells her oldest daughter before leaving the kitchen.

Hana sighs and picks up one of the sandwiches her mother finished for her and Oretzi. She takes a bite as she considers the strange morning so far. Good news? Oretzi shows no signs of her injuries from the night before. Bad news? Their mother is now in overprotective mood and her little sister is probably going to be assigned to a team sometime later on that day.

She has to keep herself from thinking or saying something like ‘What could go wrong?’ because of fates tendency to throw them a curveball because of that stupid phrase.

~Kazama~

Oretzi arrived at the Hokage’s office in about five, ten minutes - running at top speed in order to make up for the lost time. Of course, now that she has arrived there she could feel every joint protesting against the run. On top of that she feels a bit dizzy. It also looks like the heady feeling wasn’t disappearing any time soon, despite the fact that she has been doubled over in front of the Hokage for some time now.

“Did you run the entire way here?” Sarutobi asks with a small chuckle.

“Yah-huh,” Oretzi puffs, slowly but surely feeling her breathing return.

“Did you look at the time?” he asks. She blinks before she turns to look at the clock hanging on his wall.

7:05am.

“…” She looks at the Hokage with a blank look. Prompting him to struggle with the laughter that has been attempting to burst through. “May as well let it out,” she tells him and that broke his restraint.

She sits in one of his chairs and plays with one of the little statuettes that are on his desk while the old man bangs his fist on the wooden surface. The man was likely to laugh himself into a grave if he doesn’t stop to breathe.

7:10am.

She stares at the old man whose face looks like an unhealthy shade of purple. “… I don’t want to be accused of killing you by laughter. It’s a sad way to go anyway,” she comments to him as the Hokage mops his face with a handkerchief. She groans when he starts snickering. “Hokage-sama,” she whines, her ears almost flat against her skull as she gives him a wide-eyed pout.

This manages to cure the chuckles right out of him and nearly had him saying ‘Aw’ to his complete and utter horror. “That look,” he starts as he shields his face, “ought to be put in the forbidden jutsu scroll.” Oretzi just gives him a smile that has him shaking his head. “Alright, I know you’re early today,” he begins, getting an embarrassed chuckle from the girl, “so I’ll just get down to business.”

He pulls out a thin file and flips it open. “Inuzuka Oretzi, formerly known as Kazama Oretzi. Adopted formally by Inuzuka Tsume,” he starts, with the girl looking at him in a combination of confusion and curiosity. “Current age is eight years old and… as of yesterday a graduate from the Konohagakure Academy. Very impressive considering that you only joined us six, seven months ago.” He smiles at the young hanyou, getting an unsure smile in return. “However, as a result of your early graduation I’m afraid I don’t quite have a team to put you in.” He leans back and studies the girl in front of him.

“But you have something in mind,” she comments, sensing that he has something floating around in his head.

“Perhaps… There are several genins who either a) lost their teams due to misfortune on the field or b) their teammates went on to become chunins.”

“So you’re thinking about using the genins to form a team?” she asks, her tail thumping against the back of her chair. She has to lay a hand on the long appendage to get it to stay still.

“Sharp as ever,” he comments, confirming the girl’s suspicions as he retrieves a second file. “As a result of your strong senses your potential as a tracker has some merit. And it just so happened I have a Hyuuga on reserves due to medical reasons,” he opens the file and briefly scans through it. “Hyuuga Tamashii, age 13 - according to the stats he has gained a near mastery over his Byakugan as well as some of their clan jutsu.” He studies the file a bit more. “I’d like to pair the two of you with someone from the Aburame clan,” he continues, “However, there is no one currently a genin and in reserves. In addition to that the only member of their clan in the Academy was actually in your class.”

Oretzi frowns as she considers who he might be talking about before she remembers the creepy kid with that annoying buzzing noise coming from inside him. She can recall Ino-chan telling her that he’s from the Aburame clan and no one really knows him all that well. “So who would you pair us up with?”

The Hokage frowns as he closes the two files, considering her valid question. “Ideally I want someone who is capable of tracking or using stealth, since with you and Hyuuga Tamashii the team will be better suited for tracking and/or recon.”

“Wouldn’t knowing how to assassinate be better?” Oretzi asks.

Sarutobi sighs as he leans on his arms, propping his chin on his laced together hands. “That is quite a question to be asking me, Oretzi-chan.”

“We are shinobi, Hokage-sama. The way I see it, sugarcoating what we do doesn’t make things better or easier to accept,” she tells him, her head tilted just slightly that gave her an aura of innocence. Contrasting severely with the topic she is talking about. “Tracking my targets makes me think of hunting,” she confesses. “And hunting always lead to death. Not to watch and observe, to get information.” She bows her head partially. “I understand the need for information. **Accurate** information, but it will not in my nature to refrain from a kill.”

He studies the young eight year old standing in front of him. Wondering if she ever had her innocence or was it taken away by the cruelty of this world. She amazes him how she can be giddy and excited one second and then so serious the next - young in her antics but old in her thinking capabilities. Once again he has to wonder if being half human and half wolf demon has anything to do with the way she seems so mature and immature at the same time.

“At this moment, it probably would be best for your team to learn tracking first. Perhaps later down the road, when you are a bit mature I will have your jonin instructor begin your lessons on assassinations.”

“It’d be best to teach us now, Hokage-sama,” Oretzi argues. “Yes, we’re young. I am doubly so since it is likely I will be the youngest of my new teammates. However, by getting us used to death at an early age as well as inflicting it there will be less chances of us possibly freezing up on the fields.” The hanyou cracks her neck before she leans forward, her dark eyes darkening even further until it was like looking into a void. “I may not have lived here in Konohagakure for a year yet but every demon in the Underworld have a bet about how long human shinobi will last - especially the rookies from the Academies. A vast majority of them put their deaths at six months or less.”

Sarutobi had to wince at the reality of that. For demons to be making such bets - he didn’t want to dwell on it. With a sigh he picks up a third file and looks over it briefly. Ideally this would be the best jonin sensei for Oretzi, someone who is willing to go as far as teach her and her futureteammates the skills to later on perform assassinations. He looks at the Hyuuga file again before sighing. He wasn’t sure if he is right for this team now with the goal for them to be a tracking/assassination team. On one hand he’d be good for the team because of his kekkei genkai’s ability to see in distances - a good skill to have on a tracking team. But for assassinations…

Oretzi shifts in her seat nervously after spending some time in silence, the elderly man studying the files in front of him. “Hokage-sama?” she finally calls out.

“Hai?” His voice didn’t tell her to shut up but at the same time there wasn’t an invitation to continue.

“Erm… What should I do right now?” she questions him. As it is, she doesn’t see her presence helping him make decisions.

Sarutobi blinks and looks up from the files. “Ah right,” he mutters as he closes the files, making a decision for now. “Head to Training Ground 2 to meet with your jonin sensei,” he instructs before he gets an idea. He leaves his chair, motioning for Oretzi to follow, and goes to one of the bookshelves in his office. He searches through the titles before selecting a scroll. “Here, my present to you for graduating.”

Stunned by Sarutobi-ojii’s kindness she accepts the scroll with a bow. A glance at the title shows that it has to do with the different types of jutsu available in the world as well as nature transformations. She is then handed a small slip of paper similar to a bookmarker.

“Show this to your sensei and they will tell you what to do with it,” Sarutobi instructs her.

“Hai,” she tells him before bowing. She then takes her leave and the elderly man sighs, suddenly exhausted now.

“So young,” he mutters to himself, collapsing into his chair. In some ways the girl makes him ponder if she is something of a genius - graduating from the Academy at the age of eight is a feat not many manage to do. Hatake Kakashi is one of the few that managed that feat at a much younger age. Jiraiya’s student, Namikaze Minato, is another example of a genius produced by Konoha. Uchiha Itachi as well, even if the name brings nothing but regret to him. All of them were considered to be geniuses of their generations. Including one of his former students - Orochimaru. “I’ve gone sentimental,” he mutters as he pulls out several more files to look over. He has to pick out a third member for the new team and as he considers his possibilities one particular file stands out to him.

“Kagami ririisu,” he mutters as he glances over the details attached to it. “Mm… with something like that infiltration is possible…” With infiltration the team will be able to gain easy access to a building where their target is hiding which would… The possibilities are virtually limitless. “Looks like I found your third teammate, Oretzi-chan,” he mumbles. He didn’t know if he should be proud of this fact or not. Was he seriously considering this team to be a tracking/assassination focused?

~Kazama~

Oretzi has been sitting on a post for some time now, her tail twitching every once awhile as she reads the scroll Sarutobi-ojii has given her. Now she had names for some of the jutsu her okaa-san and ane-chan used when sparring. Kage Bunshin no jutsu, Kage Kunai no jutsu or its sister jutsu - Kage Shuriken no jutsu, and on top of that a type of Shunshin! She focused heavily on the shunshin because - while she had observed her okaa-san using it a few times - she never understood the concept behind it. So it was a good way for her to finally practice it - there one second and gone the next.

_‘The subject - depending on their nature alignment - will be able to use their affinity in combination with this jutsu. Upon combination with element and this jutsu the subject will disappear and reappear in a show of the element. One example is a shinobi with a dual affinity for lightning and fire. This shinobi is capable of using one or the other or perhaps both when using this jutsu.’_

Oretzi smiles to herself before tilting her head slightly to the left in time to avoid getting her cheek sliced by a kunai. “Anko-san,” she whines at the woman, turning to look at her. The snake woman smiles mischievously at her, causing Oretzi to eye her warily.

“Good to see that you’re feeling better after yesterday,” Anko says as she walks over to the girl. At the moment, because the girl is still sitting on the post, Anko now stands shorter than her. She gives Oretzi a tight smile that has the younger girl worried for a second. Then without warning Anko grabs one of the girl’s wolf ears, causing her to yelp. “What the fuck were you thinking?!”she demands angrily as the girl leans with the captured ear in an attempt to relieve the ache. “Facing two jonins - one of who is an ANBU?! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW CLOSE YOU CAME TO BEING KILLED?!”

By this point two things happened. One: Oretzi now has a migraine as a combination from being yelled at in point blank distance and ringing ears as a result of being yelled at. Two: she leaned too far and fell off the post which finally freed her ear. This almost broke her neck and has her clutching her head from the pain of hitting the ground right between her ears and from the splitting headache that struck her because of it.

“Gomen,” Oretzi whines as she finally pushes herself into an upright position, still clutching her head. “Gomen nasai.”

Anko sighs as she kneels down so that she’s at the same eyelevel as the girl. “You scared your okaa-san, gaki,” she rubs the girl’s head, shaking her head. “Almost terrified her into an early grave.” Oretzi looks at her with her wide teary eyes and she lightly bops her. “Hey, don’t give me those puppy eyes, gaki. Your okaa-san and I… we care about what happens to you. And feeling your youki like that… well, it made us worry.”

Oretzi frowns as she ducks her head, her ears expressing her sorrow at the worry she gave them. Anko could see this perfectly clear - one of the few weaknesses Oretzi has by having a tail and a pair of ears, it always give her away. “Listen, gaki, I know you care about everyone. Your okaa-san, Hana-chan, Kiba-kun even though he’s a bit of a douchebag, Sarutobi-sama, Ino-chan, Sakura-chan, Naruto-kun, and I like to think I’m on that list too,” Anko says, holding up a hand to keep the girl quiet when she makes to protest. “But getting yourself killed isn’t going to help them - not at this level anyway.”

Oretzi tilts her head as she studies the older woman. Then without saying anything she simply throws her arms around her, holding her as tightly as she could without hurting her. “I care about you… You’re my special person, Anko-chan.”


	6. Chapter 6

Anko blinks at the endearment, surprised by the change of the suffix. She has been trying for months now to get the girl to call her by her name without any of the suffix but now that she has been called Anko-chan, she felt that she didn’t want to lose that suffix ever. She shakes her head and rubs the girl’s wolf ear gently as a silent apology for the rough handling.

“So I heard you graduated, ne?” she says, pulling away to get a good look at the girl’s hiati-ate.

“Hai!” Oretzi cheers, thrusting a fist up. Anko chuckles at the girl’s antic as she grabs her chin to hold her still and brushing her bangs away to study her proof.

“Looks good on you, gaki. But what did you do to the cloth?” she questions her, noticing the shape it is in.

“My youki burned some of it last night,” Oretzi pouts.

Anko nods her head in understanding, recalling some of the girl’s complaints about how her youki burns her clothes and even that time when she help her learn how to use her chakra instead of her youki. “Alright then, gaki, fork over the hiati-ate,” she commands as she digs through her trench coat’s pockets.

“Nani?” Oretzi tries to scramble away from Anko, unsure of her intentions.

“Gaki, just let me see the damn hiati-ate,” Anko snaps at the girl with a scowl, but the tone she used only convoyed that she wants to help. Oretzi sighs and unties the cloth and hands it over. “Damn, kid, you must’ve dished out a lot of your youki for it to be this bad.”

The black cloth of the hiati-ate - normally thick - has been burned thin for a lack of a better word and from the looks of it was probably a few days short of falling apart. Just one more blast of youki would have been enough to put it in complete and utter tatters. Strangely enough the metal plate wasn’t warped or damaged.

“Hey, gaki,” Anko calls as she loosens the plate from the rag that is the cloth.

“Hai?”

“Have you tried channeling your youki through your kunai?” Oretzi only blinks at her blankly. “I’ll take that as a no.” She shakes her head as she considers the possibilities of what the kid can do with her almost limitless youki.

She says almost because she truly don’t know how much the girl has. Hatake Kakashi - with his Sharingan - was able to tell that her chakra coils are far larger than most, including Naruto. Yet unlike him she is able to control it far better than he ever was. Now if she could get a Hyuuga to pull their heads out of their asses long enough she might be able to see how much chakra the girl have.

She leans forward and ties the hiati-ate around the girl’s neck, smirking to herself. “There, that’s a nice collar for you,” she teases, getting a blush and an irritated look at the same time.

“Anko-san!” Oretzi protests.

“Aw, gaki, you’re already back to calling me that?” Anko frowns as she considers what she can do to get the girl back to calling her Anko-chan.

Oretzi tilts her head and crosses her arms. One of her ear had dropped down while the other one remained upright - almost looking just like the action of a raised eyebrow. Anko had to resist the urge to go ‘Aw’ at the sight. “It’s not polite,” the girl declares.

“I don’t give a fuck about politeness, kiddo. I don’t want to be called Anko-san,” the snake woman scowls at the hanyou. “Not by you especially.”

The two look at each other, the eight year old hanyou and the twenty year old Tokubetsu jonin - bound to each other by nothing except similar circumstances.

Oretzi, because of her mix parentage, is a subject of many out right abuse from both human and demon races. Humans always look down upon those in her situation and constantly try to kill them. While demons always consider hanyous to be inferior to them and some even consider them to be a rare type of delicacies. Some hanyous are eaten by their demonic parent along with their human parent.

Anko, because of her former mentor, has been restricted to her Tokubetsu status because the Councils - both civilian and military - fears that she would corrupt the next generations. In addition to that they fear she will become like her former sensei. As a result she has been a Tokubetsu for quite some time and it does not seem likely she will be anything else but that. Growing up after being abandoned by him she always felt like she is still under his shadow. No one except a select few do not fear her.

Anko shakes her head and stands up, cracking her neck with a sigh. “Come on, gaki. I’ll treat you to a few dangos,” the woman says as she makes to leave.

Oretzi scrambles to her feet and jogs so that she’s standing by the older woman’s side. “Anko-chan?” she questions as her hand slips into the jonin’s. This has the unintended effect of causing Anko to freeze up - a comical thing to do when walking. The two look at each other for what seems like a long moment before Oretzi makes to pull her hand away, feeling rejected.

Before she can completely do so Anko clasps her hand around Oretzi’s and without another word pulls her to her favorite shop - Sweet-Sweet Dango Shop. Nothing ever beats their service!

~Kazama~

“Anko-chan,” Oretzi leans forward, her fingers playing with one of the skewers of her now finished plate of dangos.

“Hai?”

“Why were you at the training ground?” Oretzi asks, a full hour and a half after they left said place.

“…” she looks at the hanyou with such profound incredulity that the young girl was fighting the urge to duck her head in embarrassment. “You know… asking the questions hours after they should’ve been asked… kind of puts you in a bad spot.”

“…… I need to work on that don’t I?” Oretzi mutters with an awkward chuckle, scratching the back of her head in a manner similar to Naruto.

“You’re young. You’re not always going to ask the right question,” Anko waves it off. “However, in order to answer your question…” She smirks at the young girl and holds out a hand. “I believe Sarutobi-sama told you to give me something?”

Oretzi blinks at the snake woman for a long moment before smiling happily. “Really?” Her tail, already wagging in excitement, gave her an even more puppy look that has Anko chuckling at the girl’s happiness. It was enough to off-balance her own gruff brash attitude whenever she is in her presence. She can already see her reputation going down the drain rather quickly as a result.

“Hai,” she answer simply.

Oretzi has always prided herself in never being like any other girl. Namely, squealing - aside from that one time when her okaa-san announced that she is being adopted - and screeching. In other words, producing loud high pitched sounds that is liable to make her ears ring for hours. Sadly she managed to squeal for the second time in her life as she throws herself across the table, succeeding in knocking the woman off the seat and onto the ground.

Despite the squeal - Anko will later swear to Kami herself that her eyes saw doubles for a split of a second - the woman was laughing. This eight year old, nearly five feet tall, with wolf ears and tail to boot girl just threw herself across the table in pure giddiness just because she - Mitarashi Anko - is her sensei? She didn’t know any other ego booster that would be better than this.

She couldn’t resist ruffling the girl’s already wild hair as she forces them into a mostly upright position. “Alright, alright, jeez gaki. I’m really feeling the love here.” Almost the second she said love Oretzi was off of her like a rocket, an avid blush dusting her cheeks as she reclaims her spot - leaving a puzzled jonin on the floor. Was it something she said?

As she picks herself she notices that Oretzi has placed the item on the table between them. So she retakes her seat and slides the paper to Oretzi. “This is a special type of paper, created from some tree I don’t even remember what it’s called,” Anko starts. “By channeling your chakra through this it’ll let me know what your element affinities are.”

Oretzi looked positively excited by this prospect of learning her element and picks the small tag up. After taking a second to center herself she pushes her chakra into the paper.

At first nothing happens but then the tag turns into damp dirt that almost immediately turned into small wood chips. Then in addition to that it explodes in a fiery ball of flames, causing the young hanyou to yelp in shock as she puts out the fires with Anko assisting.

Once the shop is in no danger of burning down - with a severe glare of warning from the owners - the two shinobi stare at the charred pieces of the tag before looking at each other. “Um… what does that mean?”

Anko sighs as she takes a swig of her drink. “From the looks of it you have a strong affinity for water, a strong affinity for earth - and judging by what happened with the tag… well I have to guess that you’re able to use your affinities for those two elements and combine them to use wood release. In addition to that you have an abnormally high affinity for fire…” She considers the explosion of fire for a moment. “It’s possible you might a triple affinity.” Oretzi looks at her in confusion at first before she ducks her head as she digs through a pouch.

Oretzi pulls out the scroll she had gotten from the Hokage and opens it to a certain passage. “Wasn’t the only person with the Wood release the Shodai Hokage?” she asks innocently, pointing it out to Anko.

“Hai. He was extremely skilled in subduing and controlling the Bijuu Lords as a result.” Anko vaguely recognized the scroll from Sarutobi-sama’s personal shelves. The fact that it is in someone else’s possession implied that he has placed his confidence in her. “No one has ever shown any talent in that particular element since his death.”

This has Oretzi tilting her head in thought. “My mama could control the plants,” she mutters.

Anko’s eyes widen just slightly at the reminder of who the hanyou’s mother is. Then her brain factors in that information and her mind concludes that the Wood release was passed down to the girl. “Somehow it’s a bit ironic that you have a fire affinity,” Anko comments drily as she orders more dangos for the two of them.

Oretzi just tensed at the mention of fire, causing Anko to look at her strangely. “Kid?”

The young hanyou looks at her newfound sensei and Anko could see the suppressed fear lingering in the girl’s eyes. It was shocking - for Anko - to see such an emotion in the girl and it has her reaching for the genin.

Almost immediately Oretzi flinched back, the fear turning into panic, and she falls off the chair with a yelp. Followed closely by a whine of pain. In that brief second where Anko’s mind was processing the scene there is a thought. How the hell does she know the different types of whines the girl uses?!

The second after that thought crosses her mind Anko is out of her seat and kneeling next to the eight year old who is clutching her head for the second time that day. “Gaki?” she hesitates in reaching for the girl after what just happened.

“Gomen,” Oretzi mutters, rubbing her head with one hand and pushing herself upright with the other.

“Kid… do you have… a phobia?” The empty look in Oretzi’s eyes made her worry and when she tries to touch her she gets another flinch and she has to pull herself away and show the girl that she isn’t a danger to her. “Oretzi-kun?”

Oretzi’s shoulders shook for a long moment and slowly but surely she regained her energy, her tail - almost unnaturally still - begins to move back and forth in a lazy pattern. “I…” Before she could say anything else Oretzi’s ears flatten themselves against her skull and Anko scoots away just a little. Without another word Oretzi gets up and went to get the bill for their lunch, leaving a stunned and confused Anko at the table.

~Kazama~

With the kid unwilling to explain her reaction towards the word fire Anko saw that it was best not to risk setting her off by attempting to teach her any of her katon jutsu. She might be able to call in a few favors to get other nature specialists to help cover the areas she cannot teach as well as checking out a few scrolls from the library for the kid to read up on the theories.

With no other choice but to focus on Taijutsu and weaponry she gave the young hanyou a specific list of tasks to be done, within a thirty minute time frame - the problem is, the tasks Anko wrote down could, at best, be done within an hour. Maybe an hour and a half. But thirty minutes? No one would be able to do all of the tasks that quickly. Main reason for the seemingly impossible tasks? It tests to make sure that she understands the objective - gather all of the material on the list before time is up - and her ability to follow orders - such as she cannot use anything except Taijutsu and her kunai weaponry.

For one it forces the girl to improve on her speed and - while she does have good aim she generally lack enough power behind the throws - her strength. Anko had already noticed that Oretzi is actually already quite strong but at the same time she thinks it is because of the fact that she is both human and demon. So at the moment she has a feeling that she can go further if she can hone her strength - she makes a note to look into weights or weight seals. It might be easier for the girl to train her muscles by the use of weights - it’ll also give the results more readily than the usual training. She hates to admit it but it’s possible that she may have to recruit Might Gai’s help in the taijutsu department - especially the weights.

She just hopes that Oretzi will resist Gai’s attempts to put her in the twice confounded green bodysuit or else she’ll do more than grab her wolf ears next time.

She munches on a dango as she waits for Oretzi to show up. A glance at her watch shows that she has less than a minute left before time is up and she’ll have to start from scratch again. Already she has done it five times - with no end for the girl’s chakra.

She reaches for the last skewer of dango before blinking when she realizes that it is missing. “Who the f-!” she starts before her eyes land on Oretzi who is currently munching on her last dango, her tail wagging happily. Scowling angrily at the girl’s back she removes her trench coat, stalking up to the hanyou before grabbing the back of her collar - causing the girl to yelp. “Stealing my dangos?” she growls at the meek girl.

“Gomen, Anko-sensei,” Oretzi whines, her eyes wide as she stares at the older woman. “But I finished!” She points to the pile of items her sensei had given her a list to find or win in some form of manner. Anko looks over the pile and smirks when she sees some of the more difficult items laying on top.

“Gaki… did you break into Kurenai’s apartment or something?” Anko snickers as she sorts through the items. Then her eyes widen at the sight of Kakashi’s precious Icha-Icha series. Especially the ones with the autographs. “Kid, you did well,” Anko mutters, ruffling the girl’s hair before she seals the items in different scrolls - each one marked with the item’s owner’s name so that she can return them to the proper owners or - in the case of Kurenai and Kakashi - get something in exchange for returning them.

Oretzi smiles before ducking her head. Anko saw this but couldn’t figure out a reason for the girl’s actions so she chose to leave it be for the time being.

“Were you seen?”

Oretzi frowns with a sigh. “I think Kurenai-san broke out of my genjutsu before I was completely gone,” she tells her sensei. “And Hatake-san had really strong traps in his apartment. I think at least two went off.” The girl’s tail curls around her waist partially and she reaches for it to reveal a new jagged streak of silver fur along the appendage. “My poor tail,” she whines.

Anko blinks at the now bi-colored tail before her eye flicks up to the silver streak in the hanyou’s hair. Her mind makes a connection between the two that begins to anger the older woman. She has to force her anger down in an attempt to keep the girl from thinking that she is angry with her.

“Hey, kid...” she waits until Oretzi is looking at her. “If someone was to… leave a scar it’ll…”

Oretzi gesture to the silver streak in her hair. “It’ll leave some evidence in my hair or fur,” she concludes for the older woman before standing, her back popping as she stretches. Anko frowns when she notices a flash of black markings before the shirt hides them once again. “Anko-sensei, is there anything else we should do?”

She blinks, forcing her mind to work again before she shakes her head no. “That’s it for today. Meet me here tomorrow at sunrise. We should be able to get in a few hours of practice before your new teammates arrive.”

“Hai,” Oretzi says before bowing. “See you tomorrow!” she says cheerfully before running off. Anko walks home at a subdued fashion, thinking about the little things she has picked up about the girl. Nothing seems to be adding up in her mind.

~Kazama~

Oretzi lays curled in a loose ball at the base of a tree, her tail draped over her legs. Nearby her sensei sits in a tree, waiting for the girl’s new teammates to appear. The exhausted hanyou had already ran ten laps with weights on her arms, chest, and legs, attempted to do the tree climbing exercise with little to no success, and practiced some of Anko’s taijutsu style but kept reverting back to the style similar to the Inuzuka clan’s.

Anko - at some point - started to doze off at some point so when she hears something she almost falls out of the tree as she jerks to awareness. Her eyes almost immediately finding the person who has entered the training ground.

It is a tall boy, standing at the height of five feet and six inches, with his hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. His hiati-ate tied in its proper place and his pupil-less eyes taking in his surroundings. She studies him and found that she is pleased that he’s in good shape already. His body language looks calm and casual but there is that underlying presence of awareness of any possible enemies. She removes a kunai and flicks it at him - satisfied when he dodges it almost like a pro. This kid shouldn’t be a genin still.

“Come down here and face me,” the boy calls out to the person who had thrown the kunai at him.

“No need to get all huffy gaki,” Anko tells him, causing him to whirl around, as she bends down to pick up her kunai.

“Mitarashi Anko?” he questions, narrowing his eyes slightly as he studies the woman.

“Hai.”

He frowns ever so slightly before his face turns neutral again. “Hyuuga Tamashii,” he introduces himself. He gets a smirk from his new sensei but before he can comment on it he gets a pointed finger.

“Take a seat, gaki. We’re still waiting for your teammate,” she instructs him before disappearing in a whirl of leaves, causing him to realize that he had been speaking with a clone. Silently cursing himself he walks over to the post, leaning against it as he makes a mental note to step up his training with the Byakugan, never mind the fact that he hadn’t had it activated when he spoke with the clone.

Tamashii, waiting for his teammates to arrive, activates his kekkei genkai and is greeted with the ability to see his surroundings easily. He finds his sensei sitting in one of the trees with a bored expression, twirling her kunai with an ease that most shinobi cannot do without injuring themselves. At the base of the same tree sleeps an unfamiliar shinobi. Just looking at this one is enough to give him a headache with the intensity of the chakra burning within her. So instead he looks for something else to focus on.

His silent prayer is answered in the form of a somewhat short girl approaching them. Her chakra levels was slightly above average for most beginner kunoichi. The closer she came the clearer he can see her. She has long purple hair - similar to Mitarashi’s hair color but darker- that appears to have been braided back with her bangs left free. The hiati-ate appears to be tied around the girl’s arm - the plate slightly modified to be suited for this usage. There is a slight bounce in the girl’s strides and he can gauge that she is actually in good shape as oppose to the fan obsessed kunoichi he had the misfortune of meeting in the academy.

If she can take being a shinobi seriously then perhaps this team won’t be so insufferable.

It doesn’t take long for the girl to arrive at the training ground and before anyone can blink a kunai flies through the air. The girl, instead of dodging it completely, catches it after she sidesteps it, somehow slipping her finger into the ring as it flies past her. With a twist of her body she throws the kunai back at the source.

“Oh, I like this one,” someone chuckles off to the side and they look to see that it is Anko who is once again eating dangos off a skewer. She finishes off the last one before using the skewer as a senbon - aimed straight for the sleeping girl under the tree.

Before it can hit the girl’s buttocks a black tail sweeps it away and the girl pushes herself up into a sitting position - yawning and stretching her arms. Affording Tamashii and the third teammate a view of her wolf like ears and tail.

“What is she!” the Hyuuga boy exclaims, losing his cool for the first time. Oretzi gives him a puzzled look as she picks herself off the ground, dusting off her clothes.

“A hanyou,” the purple haired girl says in shock. She then tackles Oretzi with a squeal, “Oh you’re so kawaii!!”

This has the unintended result of making Oretzi see doubles from the squeal and causing her to fall under the weight of the older girl. Though the girl is the same height as her she is heavier - actually average for her height. However, Oretzi is still underweight for her height and age so there was a difference.

Oretzi is still struggling to put on weight but everything went almost straight to her energy deposits instead of converting to fat or muscle. So she ends up burning through the calories and as a result she doesn’t put on anything except maybe the tiniest bit of weight. Her okaa-san said that if she doesn’t put on at least ten or fifteen pounds by the end of the week she’ll have to take her to the Akimichi clan and have the clan head - Akimichi Chouza - help her put on weight. She doubted she even put on a pound. If anything she lost weight since she started training with Anko-sensei.

“Ow,” Oretzi whines, clutching the back of her head as the purple haired girl scrambles off the wolf hanyou. She pushes herself into upright position, mock glaring at Anko who had burst into laughter at the near automatic reaction of Oretzi’s teammate. “Who are you?” she questions the girl as she slowly but surely feel the bump on her head disappear.

“Gomen, my name is Akino Hoshi,” the girl bows respectfully.

“Inuzuka Oretzi,” the hanyou returns the favor, finally dropping her hand from her head.

“You’re an Inuzuka? You look nothing like them. You don’t even have the markings!” Tamashii says snidely before he is wacked in the head by Anko. “You’re nothing like those stupid mutts!”

“You’d do well to respect others, Hyuuga. I don’t care what Clan you are from but in this team you will put aside all petty differences,” Anko growls in warning as Oretzi hops onto one of the post, her tail helping her balance at first before sweeping back and forth lazily once she has it.

With one hand on the post to keep her balance she grabs the tall boy’s collar, yanking him up slightly with her strength alone. “I may not care about a lot of things in this Human world,” she starts lowly, “but my family and Anko-sensei are my precious people. Insult my family again and I will make you wish you were never born.” Her eyes shines gold briefly before she releases him to collapse to his knees with a mile long stare that most traumatized victims have.

Anko sighs and takes a cautious look at the Oretzi’s eyes to find there is a hint of gold in her eyes - fading rapidly. “While I appreciate the thought, traumatizing your teammate isn’t good for the overall teamwork.”

“I didn’t do anything?” Oretzi says in confusion, the statement coming out as a question as a result.

“… So you’re saying you didn’t use your doujutsu?”

Oretzi blinks before frowning. “I still haven’t mastered it yet,” she confesses. This causes Anko to rub her face. That changed everything - with the girl’s extreme emotions activating the doujutsu and projecting the intent behind her words. A double edged sword from the few times Tsume and herself had gotten caught up in the effects of the girl’s doujutsu.

“We’ll have to work on that, gaki,” she tells Oretzi before waving a vial under Tamashii’s nose - snapping him out of his stupor. The second he recognizes whose face is in front of him he scream his apologies and scrambles away and she turns to a sheepish Oretzi. “Just what were you imagining?” she asks the girl dubiously.

“Er… I was thinking about what Ibiki-san told me once.” Anko was torn between groaning and laughing at what the girl said. She had to worry about the mental damage the kid may have done.

“Okay, enough monkeying around, gaki,” she gestures for the trio to make themselves comfortable. “So let’s get the introductions out of the way. I am Mitarashi Anko. My likes are teasing my friend Yuhi Kurenai, torturing my hapless victims, and eating dangos.” She pauses as she is left with the feeling that she has forgotten something. “Oh and messing with Oretzi-kun and Naruto-kun. My dislikes are bullies, anyone who badmouth Oretzi, Naruto, or me. My hobbies are…” she smirks as she frees a kunai and throws it at Oretzi who ducks to avoid getting her cheek sliced. “Trying to taste Oretzi-kun’s blood and generally throwing people’s expectations of me off.” Tamashii and Hoshi stared at their new sensei like she’s insane while Oretzi just shrugged her shoulders, already used to her.

She looks at her three students before pointing at the Hyuuga boy. “You’re next.”

“My name is Hyuuga Tamashii. I have no likes. I dislike anyone who annoys me. My hobby is training to further myself.” Oretzi coughs something that sounds suspiciously like boring but Anko doesn’t call her up on it because she personally agrees.

“Okay, mini-me, you’re next.”

The girl blinks in surprise at the comment before clearing her throat. Oretzi looks at her in curiosity at Anko’s words, wondering how she got that ‘mini-me’ thing from her. The kunoichi is dressed in loose pants, the ends tucked in boots instead of the usual open toed sandals with plates attached over the toes. She has a short sleeved shirt, tucked into the pants, and bracers over her forearms and thighs. The kunai and shuriken pouches attached to the back of her belt. Her entire outfit done in black with the shiny surfaces of the plates coated with a substance to prevent reflections. Maybe it’s the hair?

“My name is Akino Hoshi. My likes are kenjutsu, taijutsu, and star-gazing,” she says with a smirk as Oretzi starts to chuckle behind her. “My dislikes are people who believe they’re superior to anyone else,” she says, glancing at Tamashii, “and anyone who thinks they can pick on the little people.” Oretzi wanted to ask what she meant by ‘little’ people. Did she mean those who are vertically challenged? Or those who can’t defend themselves? “My hobbies includes finding kawaii girls,” she glances at Oretzi who starts to blush, “and eating ice cream.”

Anko has to force herself not to laugh or else she’d never stop. She can definitely see this girl as a mini-her. Now all she needs to do is get her to loosen up a bit more.

“Aright, now for you wolfie-chan,” Anko says with a smirk, getting a wide shocked look from the wolf hanyou. And she knew why too. No one has ever dared to call her wolfie before and the pride the girl has about being a wolf - even if she is half a wolf demon - dictated that she do not allow people to use terms that seems demeaning.

“Anko-sensei!” she protests predictability at the term.

“Would you rather I use puppy-chan?” Anko retorts. The girl falls into a silence that was a bit pronounced. “I thought so. Now introduce yourself.”

The girl pouts at the woman before clearing her throat, her tail wagging just a bit excitedly. “My name is Inuzuka Oretzi, formerly known as Kazama Oretzi. My likes are wolves, moons, dangos, and Anko-sensei.” She gets a mock glare for the formal title. “My dislikes are anyone who threatens my family and friends, _mobs_ , and _abusive_ people.” Anko frowns at that little insight into Oretzi’s mind. What happened to the girl to inspire a dislike for mobs and abusive people? It was obvious by the certain stresses she placed on those words that she really did not like them. “My hobbies… mmm…” Oretzi frowns as she considers this, what were her hobbies? Something she does to relax? “I don’t know what my hobbies are at the moment so I’m open to explore.”

Anko nods her head before she pulls out three scrolls, tossing them to the trio. “Okay, I’m pretty sure Tamashii-kun and Hoshi-chan have already gone through something similar to this but for the stake of following tradition I’m putting you through a test.” Oretzi tosses the scroll back and forth between her hands, her eyes and ears intent on their sensei. “Oretzi-kun, the test is simple. There are ten locations marked on the map in the scroll. Your goal is to find the tags that looks like these,” she holds up a thin piece of paper that looks remarkably similar to the explosive tags except the writing is different - meant for something else aside from exploding. “However, only two of the tags are the ones you need to pass this test. The three of you need to locate the tags and bring them to me.”

Oretzi and Hoshi nod their heads in agreement while Tamashii curses beneath his breath about having to take the teamwork test again.

“Also, if you fail, Oretzi-kun, I’ll have no choice but to send you back to the Academy.” Oretzi’s stunned look was almost hilarious but she refrained from laughing, aware of the gaki’s wish to be like her otou-san and okaa-san. This was no joke for the hanyou. “You have one hour!” she says with a final note, using the shunshin to leave the immediate area.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope ya'll liked the chapter and this test I'm putting Oretzi-chan through. I didn't want to do a simple Bell test simply because two of the three have already been accepted as a genin. But at the same time she needs to learn something from this test - to demostrate her skills in a way that not even Iruka-sensei could.
> 
> (1) A cookie to anyone who figures out the reason for Oretzi-chan's reaction. (I'm decently sure I gave a few hints.)
> 
> (2) No matter what, being called wolfie-chan or puppy-chan is demeaning. But if one has to chose the lesser of two evils it'd be wolfie-chan. I swear to the goddess above that my ex ruined me to the prospect of being called either one and I'm afraid Oretzi-chan inherited that from me.
> 
> (3) You'd think that she'd have a hobby by now, right? After all, she's been alive for a good eight years, been living with the Inuzuka clan for at least 6 or 7 months. But because she focused so much time on training and learning she never really found something to relax - hence the lack of hobby! So I'll take suggestions for hobbies for Oretzi-chan.


	7. Chapter 7

“NANI!!!” Oretzi shouts with maybe a slight bit of youki slipping into her voice to make it a mini-roar. Not quite enough to do some damage to their surroundings but just enough to make her new teammates’ hair move as if a strong burst of wind has rushed through the treed training ground. “Anko-sensei!!” 

“Ugh stop being so loud,” Tamashii grumbles as he rubs his ears, a slight ring building up in them.

“But a test?!” Oretzi whines, her ears almost flat against her skull in aggravation.

“Don’t worry, Oretzi-chan. I’m going to be helping,” Hoshi states as she ruffles the girl’s hair, “Besides, we’re a team now. Right Tamashii-kun?”

“It’s Hyuuga-san to you,” he snaps, causing Hoshi to roll her eyes at him. 

“Still a bastard as ever I see,” she comments as she opens the scroll to study the locations of the spots. They have less than an hour to search them all for the two tags. They have two out of ten chance of finding it - not exactly the best odds in her opinion, with very little information too. She also didn’t expect the help of Tamashii with his ‘superior’ attitude. He already saw Oretzi as worthless so he wasn’t likely to go out of his way to help her pass her test.

“What was that?!” Tamashii snaps before he gets a swift kick from Oretzi - causing him to duck away. “Bitch!”

Oretzi growls loudly at him, her eyes starting to bleed gold. “You are a real meanie,” she growls.

“What are you, a five year old? Who says meanie anymore?” he laughs incredulously.

“I’m eight!” Oretzi snaps. The two genin stare at her in shock causing her to growl angrily at them. “Yes, I’m eight years old!” She whirls around and hops off the post, heading to the first location.

“Hey, hey wait Oretzi-chan!” she hears Hoshi yell after her. She pauses for the older girl to join her. She holds up the scroll they were given and points to the group of five red dots, “You can search there, they’re close to the Clan districts.” She then points at the last remaining group, “I’ll search here. Five minutes for each location should be enough time,” she adds.

Oretzi nods her head before taking off towards the Clan Districts with Hoshi going the other way.

Anko, having hidden herself to watch the interaction of the team without her presence, found herself disappointed but not surprised by Tamashii’s actions. Once a Hyuuga, it seems, always a Hyuuga. She’ll have to do something about that. She frowns to herself as she considers her possible options, creating two Kage Bunshins as an afterthought to keep an eye on the two girls. There are a place or two where the girls will not be able to enter due to their gender - making the fact Tamashii refuses to assist an even worse tactical disadvantage.

~Kazama~

Oretzi remembers a jutsu her okaa-san has used a few times and used it for her advantage, forming the right hand seals for the jutsu. There is a brief obscuration of smoke before it clears away to reveal five identical Oretzi standing in a circle, looking at each other.

“Okay, you know each location,” the original starts, “go there and find a tag. Then come back here.” The four Bunshins nod their heads before running off with the original heading to a location closest to the training ground. Something called ‘Pink Sugar’. Maybe it’s a bakery shop?

(Meanwhile with Hoshi)

The purple haired girl stared at the first location in shock. “Really? A men only hot spring?” she starts to smack her forehead in disbelief. “You had to pick now of all times, Tamashii, to be a stubborn bastard?” she shakes her head and does the appropriate hand seals for the Henge no jutsu. She looks down at herself before nodding in satisfaction. It’ll have to do for now - hopefully the tag isn’t actually inside the hot spring itself but rather in the locker room.

Her face pale as she prepares herself for the ungodly visual she’ll be getting she forces herself to enter the building, her eyes narrowed into slits to keep from seeing something unwanted.

(Oretzi)

The hanyou stares in confusion at the windowless one story building with a simple sign that says ‘Pink Sugar’ with an image of a woman lounging in what appears to be a cone shaped glass. She tilts her head to the side before shrugging, entering the building through the front door. What’s the worst that can go wrong?

Outside where Oretzi had been standing stood Anko - or rather her bunshin - who is staring after Oretzi’s back in a mixture of shock and amusement. “Of all the locations you had to get, gaki, you ended up with this one,” she shakes her head, laughing. “It’s a bit early for you to be exposed to this lifestyle.” She taps her chin in thought before shrugging her shoulders. “I did put a tag in there and it’s not night so hopefully there shouldn’t be too many ladies in there to get her into trouble.” With that decision made she returns to the shadows to keep an eye on the only entrance for the gaki’s eventual return. Hopefully without being traumatized or Tsume will kill her.

(Hoshi)

She runs out of the hot spring, soaked and slightly burned, cursing their sensei because the tag in the spring was a dud - a blank. She was so pissed off that she was muttering curses low under her breath as she stomps off to the next marker - having spent under two minutes in the place in her haste to find the stupid tag before her embarrassment forced her to drop the Henge.

Only to find that it’s a dud?!

“DAMN YOU SENSEI!!” she screams to the sky before running off to the next location - obviously feeling just a tad bit better now that she has screamed her frustration.

Not too far where she had stood Anko emerges from the shadow, chuckling. It has been amusing to see Hoshi’s rather exaggerated reaction to at least five naked men - and they were all in good shape too. The genin is fortunate - the bunshin thinks - that the second men only location isn’t included in the five she has taken upon herself. But unfortunately for the experienced genin there should be at least one location that will test her in a way that is far worse than the hot spring. “I wouldn’t want to be you,” she laughs as she resumes watching over the genin.

There may never be another chance to get blackmail material on the gaki.

(Oretzi)

Anko frowns in concern when the girl doesn’t come out within five minutes and using the Henge no jutsu she slips into the club. She walks down the long aisle before finally entering the large room outfitted with a bar, a dance floor, and an array of tables and booths along the sides of the room. She squints her eyes in the dimly lit room before she found the gaki.

The sight has her just about to burst into laughter, her fist pressed against her lips in an effort to stifle what little that did escape. The gaki is sitting at the bar with a gaggle of older women - mostly those in their twenties - surrounding her. Cooing at the young hanyou because of her ears and tail. In fact Oretzi had her tail tightly against her chest with her arms securing it there protectively. Her face bright red as the women insist on rubbing her sensitive ears, her eyes wide as she took in her surroundings.

Still trying not to laugh Anko has to conclude that she was accosted almost immediately if she’s still looking around so desperately. Wait. She feels her blood go cold as Oretzi’s eyes land on her and she somehow manages to break free of the women’s grasp - crossing the room in two heartbeats before latching herself onto the henged bunshin. The suddenness of Oretzi’s actions distracted her and she dropped the Henge by accident.

“Anko-chan,” the girl whines, her eyes still wide as she stares at the other women with misgiving.

“Aw, she already has a girlfriend,” one of the women complain as the crowd begin to thin out.

“Arigatou,” Oretzi says to the bunshin as she unlatches herself from her, her tail relaxed as she runs her eyes over the room again. She then returns to the bar, without another look to Anko, and speaks with the bartender who allows her behind the counter and into the backroom where Anko has hidden one of the tags.

Still stunned by the suddenness of Oretzi latching onto her Anko stood there for a minute longer before she overhears someone whispering about how kawaii the hanyou had looked - even when she is clinging to the snake mistress. They went on to say that she deserves someone better - someone who hasn’t been tainted by darkness. Reminded by the fact that almost everyone in the village looks down at her she makes to leave only to hear a familiar growl.

Turning around she is stunned to find the eight year old girl staring down the women who had bad mouthed her sensei. If the girl had a full wolf form she would’ve had raised hackles around her neck and down her back with her fangs bared menacingly at the women. As it was her eyes sending the meanest glare she could muster was enough to startle the women’s hearts into their throats.

It was a combination of amusing and worrying because she didn’t want the girl to rip them a new one and yet at the same time it was funny because she knew that the girl was not as old as she appeared to be on most occasions. Her four foot and eleven inches, while not exactly an impressive height was something intimating to see from this furious hanyou. It was especially worrying when she realizes that the gaki’s demonic visage has strengthen somewhat, the slits in her eyes highlighted by some red glow, her nails and canines elongating, and there was a heavy aura around her.

She quickly moves in and with a small grunt of effort she picks up the girl, throwing her over her shoulder. “Sorry ladies, but we need to take our leave. Say goodbye to them, Oretzi-kun,” Anko says cheerfully with a heavy dose of sarcasm before she walks out of the building with the hanyou squirming and protesting to get down.

Once outside she sets the girl down and crosses her arms, staring down at the younger girl. “Damn it, Oretzi, how the hell did you manage to attract that much trouble so quickly?” she shakes her head in disbelief. She hadn’t expected for such a mob to appear in the club, not so early in the morning anyway.

“It’s the ears and tail,” Oretzi protests as she averts her eyes.

“And your near fatal cuteness level,” Anko retorts.

“It’s not my fault!” Anko snorts her opinion on that. “Anko-san!” Oretzi immediately gets a disappointed look and she ducks her head, confused by the changes in the suffixes. She’s someone to be respected, she’s her sensei, but she wants to be called Anko-chan or Anko. She makes to say something before one of her Kage Bunshins dispel themselves, alerting her to the fact that they haven’t found anything yet. Then, as she is absorbing that information a second one dispels and she blanches as she realized that the bunshin had to enter a gay stripping club - a twenty-four hour club.

Anko couldn’t stop the snickers that came the second she saw the girl’s face turn pale, figuring out that one of the clones must have dispelled itself. The girl’s horrified expression was something of a legend or should be made into a legend.

“You are one sick woman,” Oretzi whines, finally shaking her head.

“What, getting molested by a bunch of women doesn’t warrant that comment but whatever your bunshin saw did?” This prompts the girl to blush and a series of noises leave her mouth that causes Anko to look at the girl in confusion. Were those barks and whines?

A third kage bunshin dispels itself and she blushes at the merchandise sold at the store. “You have a very perverted mind, Anko-chan,” the girl complains to her as she makes her way to the training ground. She had found the a blank tag inside the ‘Pink Sugar’ club and the fact that only three of the four kage bunshins have dispelled themselves she can only hope that the fourth one will find it.

“Hey, it means there is fun to be had,” Anko protests as she follows her student back.

“I’m too young to even begin to understand that kind of fun, Anko-chan,” Oretzi protests.

“Kid, once I’m done with you, you’re not going to even be able to use that excuse,” Anko smirks.

Oretzi didn’t bother looking at her sensei at that remark. “Anko-chan, okaa-san isn’t going to be very happy with you,” she comments as she lands in the training ground. She then turns her attention to the real Anko as the kage bunshin behind her dispels herself. She watch how her sensei stiffen at the rush of information before she starts laughing out loud. “Anko-sensei!” she protests when the woman picks her up and puts her in her lap, her arms tightly around her.

“You gonna tell on me to your okaa-san?” Anko pouts to the hanyou who managed to turn her head enough to get a good look at the woman.

“Nazedesu ka?” Oretzi whines cutely at the woman who merely laughs and rubs the girl’s wolf ears - almost turning her putty in her hands.

“Gotta use what I have, kiddo,” Anko teases the girl as Oretzi’s kage bunshin shunshins into the area, holding up one of the two tags she was supposed to find.

“Hey Boss!” the hanyou clone says cheerfully as she hops onto the original’s lap, getting a grunt of pain from both Oretzi and Anko. “Is Anko-chan playing with you?”

Oretzi stares at her clone in disbelief. “Who are you and what have you done with my bunshin?” she questions the clone.

Anko merely smirks and ruffle the girl’s hair. “There are chances of producing ‘oddballs’ when you use the Kage bunshin,” Anko tells the girl before she frowns when she recalls something. “Speaking of Kage Bunshin no jutsu, how is it possible for you to already know this one?”

“Er… I watched okaa-san and ane-chan spar with each other,” Oretzi confesses while squirming under the weight of her clone. She finally glares at the clone and - after taking the tag away from her - dispels it. Wincing when the clone’s information floods into her head and she has a weird sense of identity when she sees how strange it is for her to be in Anko’s lap. She looked comfortable and awkward at the same time.

“You mean to tell me that you learned to do a jonin restricted jutsu simply by watching your okaa-san?”

“Hai?”

“Oretzi-kun, that is dangerous,” Anko sighs, shaking her head.

“It is how I learn,” the girl whispers, averting her eyes to find that Tamashii is looking at them yet he was also out of hearing range. “Anko-sensei, Hyuuga Tamashii doesn’t like me does he?” Oretzi hears the woman sigh behind her, at the suffix or the question she doesn’t know.

“He doesn’t even know you gaki.”

“But he’s supposed to be my teammate.”

Anko sighs again as she ruffles the girl’s hair. “Just because he’s your teammate, doesn’t mean he’ll like you.” Oretzi tilts her head back in a way that enables her to see Anko’s face. “Just be yourself, gaki, and eventually you might win him over.”

Oretzi huffs, her tail thumping against Anko’s thigh. “He gotta get that stick out of his butt first,” the young hanyou retorts.

“Why don’t you pull it out for him?” Anko suggests with a laugh.

Oretzi was going to make some sort of remark when Hoshi ran into the training ground with a horde of women behind her. Anko barked a laugh as she jumps up, causing the hanyou to fall flat on her butt before she scrambles to get up.

Hoshi jumps into the tree they were sitting under and left them to deal with the wrath of five or ten female strippers who were angry about her apparent violation of club rules - no women allowed - and her gutsy move to go through their personal belongings.Oretzi backs away from the group of scary women, her mind flashing back to the group of women that kept fondling her wolf ears.

Her movement distracted some of the women from Hoshi so when they saw her ears and tail they had that same instant reaction many other women has had towards her. Namely squealing ‘kawaii!’ before attempting to pounce her. Oretzi shriek in dismay before jumping straight up into the tree while Anko is forced to jump aside lest she get run over by the rabid ladies.

“What did you do?!” she whines to Hoshi who is balancing herself on one branch - holding the one above her with one hand.

“I had to go through their things to search for the tag,” the older girl replies as she holds up the one she had been looking for. “Thing is? It wasn’t even in their bags.”

Oretzi gives the kunoichi a cold look. “So you mean to say that we’re trapped in this tree because you stupidly went through their things for a tag that wasn’t even in there?”

Hoshi thinks for a second before nodding grimly. “Sounds about right.”

“Akino-san, I like you but I don’t like you right now,” Oretzi complains as she stays crouched, her elongated nails partially turned into claws to grip the rough bark of the tree, her tail steadying her.

“That is the weirdest contradiction I have ever heard, Oretzi-chan,” Hoshi comments. “By the way, call me Hoshi.”

Oretzi turns her head partially towards the older woman. “You’re going to be like Anko-sensei ne?”

The purple haired genin looks at the hanyou in confusion. “What you mean?”

“Just what I mean,” Oretzi replies. She sees the puzzled look and sighs. “Anko-sensei doesn’t want me calling her Mitarashi-san or Anko-san or even Anko-sensei.” She turns her attention to the crowd beneath them. Most if not all of the women did not want to climb the tree to get the ‘pervert’ that had gone through their things or to get the ‘cute’ girl with the ears and tail - which meant that they need to stay in the tree for as long as it takes for the group to become bored with the waiting. 

“What does she want you to call her then?”

“Anko-chan or without the suffixes,” Oretzi answers simply. She looks through the crowd for the snake mistress before finding her at the far side of the crowd - arguing with someone her age. She tries to listen to them but there is too many people talking for her to hear them so she pushes some of her chakra to her ears, focusing specifically on Anko’s husky voice.

~Kazama~

“What the fuck is going on here, Yukiko!” the jonin demands from the woman in front of her.

“That brat is a fuckin’ pervert, Mitarashi. The girls want a piece of him for goin’ through our fuckin’ things.”Anko blinks and looks at the genin in question before she figures out that the brat used a henge to be a guy.

“Yukiko, did you forget that I placed a tag in your club?” Anko shakes her head at the woman.

“Our fuckin’ things! You didn’t even put anything in there!”

“The gaki was being thorough,” Anko retorts.

The red haired woman snorts. “I doubt the bastard was even lookin’ for the tag. Fuckin’ pervert.”

Anko sighs. “You are aware that your ‘bastard’ is a girl?”

“That makes it all the worse.”

Anko chose not to argue with the angered woman and looks up at the two genin again. “Oi, gaki!” she shouts.

~A Few minutes Earlier~

Oretzi turns to Hoshi who looks pale. “The red head,” she says as she points to the woman, “is not happy with you.”

“Considering that she was the one who caught me and tried to seduce me, I’m not surprised.”

The hanyou frowns before she realizes something. “You dropped the henge while she was trying to seduce you?” Hoshi looked ashamed as she nods her head.

“It’s not even the first time either,” Hoshi confesses.

“How many time have you dropped the henge?”

“One too many times,” the older genin confesses with a reluctant sigh.

“Extreme emotions?”

“Like no other.”

Oretzi nods her head in understanding before she focuses on Anko who chose that moment to look at them.

“Oi, gaki!” their sensei shouts at them, causing the two genin to look at each other. “Get down here!”Oretzi shudders at the prospect of facing the women and possibly getting her ears fondled by them while Hoshi dreaded the thought of facing their wrath. “NOW!!” they hear Anko roar and Oretzi jumps out of the tree at the command with Hoshi right behind her.

The young hanyou lands behind Anko and quickly clings to her, her tail wedged between them, to keep the crazy women away from her. While Hoshi is grabbed by their sensei and forced to her knees before the pissed off club owner, Yukiko. “Do you have anything to say to her, Akino?” Anko practically snarled this, getting a hesitant touch from the eight year old girl behind her.

“I apologize, Mizurashi-san, for my intrusion of your club and personal items of both yourself and your staff,” Hoshi says with Anko’s grip on the back of her neck serving as an encouragement.

The woman, Yukiko, scowls at the genin before huffing. “This is the last time I ever do you a favor, Mitarashi,” Yukiko snaps at the jonin sensei before stomping off with the strippers following along behind her.

Oretzi sighs in relief before releasing the woman. “Too many drama in one day,” she mutters quietly as she plops down at the base of the tree as Anko lets go of Hoshi. Hoshi joins her and after a moment of silence she pulls out the tag she retrieved and hands it over to Oretzi.

“Here, now your test is done.”

Oretzi looks at the tags, studying the writing on the papers. One tag says ‘Rules are meant to be followed, the Mission above all else - including your teammates’ while the other says ‘Teamwork and your fellow shinobi above all else, including the mission’. She looks at Anko for a moment before she looks at her new teammates.

“There’s more to this,” she finally mutters, her eyes focused on her sensei.

Anko chuckles at the girl’s observation as she crouches down in front of her. “Which will be your motto?” she asks.

Oretzi frowns as she studies the tags again. She crumples one in her hand before she hands the other to Anko. “I will never abandon my teammates,” she says simply, getting a happy smirk from the older woman.

“Good to hear it gaki.” The snake mistress ruffles the hanyou’s hair before standing up, stretching her arms. “Now that excitement is over, I’ll have to fail Tamashii for not cooperating with the test and send him back to the Academy.”

“WHAT?!” the Hyuuga snaps, storming over to the trio in a blaze of fury before he is intercepted by Oretzi by a strong side kick. “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” he roars at Anko.

“I can and I will,” she states simply. “You should have never been allowed to pass,” she states, referring to his previous sensei. “Your academy marks put you in an overall low for cooperation and teamwork. On top of that you consistently refuse to assist both your old team and well as your new. This team is going to be strictlytracking, infiltration, and assassination. How the fuck are we going to trust you if you refuse to carry your own weight on this team?” she lectures at him while Oretzi crouches in front of her, her eyes feral as she slides into a stance similar to the Inuzuka’s.

“I am a Hyuuga!” he snaps at the woman, “I do not need to work with such lowly shinobi and I refuse to!”

“You’re a Branch member!” Anko retorts. “You’re not as high and mighty as you and everyone else in your clan like to think!” She crosses her arms. “News flash! Your byakugan isn’t as all seeing as your clan likes to put it! And relying purely on taijutsu weakens you severely!”

This angers the boy greatly and he throws himself at Anko only to be intercepted once again by Oretzi, her smaller size enabling her to slip close to him and past his chakra infused attacks before she throws him far away from herself and Anko.

“I told you once and I will tell you again,” Oretzi growls, “Anko-sensei is my precious person. You will not lay a hand on her!” Her voice distorted as white youki seems to coat her body, slowly starting to burn her clothes into tatters and her hiati-ate to fall free from around her throat.

Anko curses when she sees what is about to happen and tries to intervene. But before she even takes one step the hanyou is gone in a flash and Tamashii is missing from the field. “Kuso!”

She creates a Kage bunshin and has it search one end of the training ground while she checks the other. One of them is bound to find the gaki before she does serious damage to Tamashii. Especially with her youki!

~Kazama~

Oretzi had a foot pressed against Tamashii’s shoulder, the youki slowly but surely burning through his shirt and beginning to leave a mark on his skin. She flexes her fingers as she kneels and ever so gently touches the tips of her youki claws to the other shoulder before deliberately dragging them down and across his chest in a manner that would make people assume he has been hit by a diagonal attack.

His screams - loud and grating as they were - was cut off by Oretzi stuffing the ragged tatters of Tamashii’s shirt into his mouth to silence him. Her eyes, glowing an eerily red color, terrifies the older genin and as he struggles to get her off him she just smirks down at him. “I warned you last time,” the young hanyou smirks at him as she presses a knee to his heavily damaged chest - provoking a muffled scream. “You insulted my clan, attacked my Anko-chan, and on top of that you’re just an insufferable little ass.”

Oretzi leans in to stare curiously into his wide eyes. “Death is too merciful for someone like you,” she seems to smirk at the boy as she said this. “Is it because of your eyes that you hold yourself so high?” she questions as she holds her claws threateningly above the Hyuuga specific eyes - The All Seeing White eyes. “Maybe I should rid you of them,” she remarks to the boy’s terror.

She smirks at the scent of his fear and a low rumble similar to a purr seems to vibrate in the girl’s chest. “Fear. Sweet, sweet fear,”the hanyou smirks, baring her large fangs on her partially shifted face - her head shifting slightly into a shape that is similar to wolves but with a shorter snout. In short her appearance looked far more demonic than before and as she nears the boy’s face with her sharp rows of fangs the boy starts to sob and ramble.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ll change!”

Just like that Oretzi is gone and every single injury he ever suffered under her wrath disappears, startling the boy. As he picks himself up Oretzi appears nearby, causing him to jump. “Genjutsu is a success,” the girl says simply. He stares at her in awe, having been completely and utterly fooled by the genjutsu, and afraid because he now knows the consequences of angering the young hanyou.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to do something that wasn't wholly expected while at the same time giving Oretzi a grasp of what's important. Rules and the mission or the lives of her team.
> 
> (1) Two things about this. What Oretzi-chan said is why? (I think) and her ears are extremely sensitive. And she has four of them. Imagine what you can do to the poor girl :D
> 
> (2) I know I know, he's a Hyuuga, where's his stoic and holier than thou issues? He's a branch and a distant one at that. My reasoning? He just has too much anger for him to use that mask effectively and to top it all off he seriously doesn't like being around kids his age and younger. So let's just go with he's not a very good Hyuuga and leave it at that :)


	8. Chapter 8

“That-,” his voice broke so he has to clear it a few times to get it back to its normal pitch, “That was a genjutsu?”

“The entire time,” Oretzi tells him as she sits in front of him, her brown eyes staring at him.

“It…” He stops, unsure how to put it, but it wasn’t necessary as the young hanyou takes the words out of his mouth.

“Was so real?” Tamashii nods his head, his face pale as he recalls every clear detail of what she did to him or rather what her genjutsu did.

Oretzi shrugs her shoulders. “Mama is a really good illusionist,” she tells him before offering the tag she had spent her last hour searching for. “Anko-sensei rarely do something without a reason,” she tells him. “She’s right about you not caring about others…” Tamashii accepts the tag from her and looks at the writing about Teamwork. “We’re a team now, aren’t we?”

Tamashii frowns as he thinks about what he had gone through because of Oretzi’s genjutsu. “You know what,” he starts, getting a puzzled noise from the girl, “Screw my family. They tell me to never express my emotions, to always be stoic. But that got me in hot water faster than you can say damn it.”

Oretzi made a sound that was a cross breed between a huff and a laugh. “Is there no one you care for within your own clan?” she questions and she watches him as he opens his mouth almost instantly to say ‘no’ when he pauses. She tilts her head to the side as he doesn’t say something for a bit.

“Actually… Hinata-sama… I…” Oretzi nods her head in understanding as she shifts her weight around to stand on her knees.

“Then protect her as your precious person, Tamashii-kun,” she tells him before she hops up onto her feet just as Anko arrives in the area, panting. “Anko-sensei!” the girl says cheerfully as she jogs over to the woman who looks surprised that the Hyuuga hasn’t been torn into pieces.

“Gaki,” the woman starts as Oretzi stands in front of her, her tail wagging happily. “Didn’t tear him apart I see.”

“I used a genjutsu,” she tells the older woman.

“With or without the eyes?”

“With?” Oretzi answers, puzzled by the woman’s questioning so the statement came out as a question.

Anko nods her head before she shakes her head. “We still need to get you trained,” she comments as she turns her gaze to the Hyuuga. “What is your decision, Hyuuga?”

Oretzi partially turns to so that she can have both in view and she watches Tamashii bow his head for a moment. “I… after Inuzuka-chan has shown me the error of my ways… I apologize for my words and actions and wish to make up for them.” He then bows more formally to show his sincerity.

“What do you think, gaki?” Anko asks, looking at the wolf hanyou who glances at her.

“He seems ready to turn a new leaf,” is the hanyou’s simple answer before her stomach growl and she puts her arms protectively over the complaining belly - a blush adorning her cheeks.

Anko couldn’t stop the laugh that came up and she ruffles the girl’s hair. “Guess that means training is over. Hoshi, Tamashii,” she calls to her two students, the purple haired genin stepping out from the trees where she had stayed hidden during their conversation. “Let’s go, lunch’s on me.”

“BBQ!!” Oretzi cheers as she jumps for joy before the back of her shirt is seized by her sensei. “Nani?”

“You need to go home and change,” Anko tells her, causing the hanyou to look down at her now partially destroyed clothes. “Am I going to need to find something to suppress your youki until the damn plant comes in?”

“Mah,” the young genin protests before Anko rolls her eyes.

“I suppose I best teach you three how to use fuuinjutsu at some point,” Anko mutters, making a mental note as to what she will need to cover.

“Anko-sensei, I already know how to use fuuinjutsu,” Hoshi speaks up, removing a scroll with the kanji for rations on it.

“Same.” Tamashii chose that time to speak up as well.

Oretzi’s ears go flat against her skull as she pouts, realizing that she will have to play a lot of catching up to get to the same level as her teammates. Anko noticed this so she ruffles the girl’s hair again. “So, fuuinjutsu is a good place to start. You’ve already shown high marks for genjutsu. With your taijutsu, strength, and speed a close second,” Anko remarks. “You’ve also already shown that you’re capable of picking up most ninjutsu just by watching.”

“She sounds like she belongs with the Uchiha clan,” Tamashii comments as he wonders closer to them.

“Uchiha is a pain in my neck,” Oretzi scowls unhappily as she recalls the boy whom her imouto are fighting over. Tamashii laughs and slings an arm around Oretzi’s shoulders.

“Did Uchiha Sasuke reject your love?”

Oretzi shakes her head, a growl already starting to radiate from her throat. Tamashii recognizes this as a danger sign and quickly backs off - assuming that the hanyou does not appreciate his touchiness. She then starts muttering about stupid bakas who is blind to other people’s emotions and is single mindedly focused on one thing.

“Did I say something wrong?” Tamashii asks, panicked.

Anko just laughs, shaking her head. “No, no, gaki just have two imouto in the Academy. Apparently both of them fell for the Uchiha and stopped being each other’s friends. Long story short? She hates him now.” Oretzi continues to mutter about stupid Uchiha and their stupid goals until Anko bops her on the head. “Hey, gaki, go and get some change of clothes!”

“Mah, Anko-chan,” the pup whines before she vanishes in a whirl of water.

“C’mon, let’s go find that BBQ spot the gaki wants to pig out at,” Anko sighs, aware that feeding the young hanyou will be a serious drain on her wallet. Her stomach is like a black hole of some sort and everything she consumes doesn’t do anything except give her an energy boost.

“What about Oretzi-chan?” Hoshi questions as she follows the woman with Tamashii close by.

“She’ll sniff us out when she’s ready,” she explains as she attaches Oretzi’s hiati-ate plate to a new band for the girl, this one specially designed to absorb chakra when it has been directed at the seals. While chakra are not quite the same as youki she thought it might help.

~Kazama~

Oretzi whines as she rubs her sensitive head, that specific spot between her ears that always leave a strong headache in its wake whenever someone manages to hit her right there. At the moment she is crouched in a tree, her chakra keeping her secured to the branch, with her head almost between her knees.

“You okay, Koinu?” Hoshi asks her over the radio system.

“Hai,” Oretzi finally manages to mutter, wincing at the slight pain that comes when she tries to move her head. “Ran into a tree… again.” It was a common occurrence for her chakra to fluctuate when she’s tree hopping. End results? Her consistent meeting with a trunk.

They hear laughter over the line and Oretzi growls at Tamashii to stop. “What did you do this time? Barrel straight into the tree and come out on the other side?” She stops growling and the silence over the radio lasts for five seconds before Tamashii AND Hoshi starts laughing.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough teasing for now,” the trio hears their sensei interrupt over the radio. “Ookami, Twinkle, and Soul-boy. Are you in position, over,” she goes on to say.

Oretzi moves out of her position and takes a few more jumps before she lands on the forest ground, lingering in the shadows of the trees as her eyes locate their target. “This is Ookami, I’m on site, over,” she mutters softly.

“This is Twinkle, I’m in position, over.”

“This is Soul-boy, I’m in position, over.”

“Good. Now let’s-,” Anko starts to say before there is some noise on the radio and Oretzi’s voice comes through clearly.

“The cat made me!” the hanyou snarls over the radio system before they hear the cat yowling and the girl snarling and - to everyone’s surprise - cursing in a manner that impressed Anko and at the same time worried her.

“Code Red!” Anko cries before she goes after her errant student.

“KOINU!!” Hoshi shouts into the radio, causing Tamashii and Anko to yank their ear pieces out to keep from being turned deaf.

~Kazama~

The two chunins at the gates were doing they were normally doing when they had gate duties. In short? They were playing a card game with maybe half an ear directed to the road - hey, together they made a full ear.

As such they were unprepared when they hear a soft noise that sounds like someone is clearing their throat. When they turn their full attention to the gates they are alarmed to realize that there is a two stories tall wolf sitting in front of the double gates, looking at them expectantly. The size of the wolf wasn’t the only startling thing about it - no, this one also has three-count them- three tails and what appears to be a scroll strapped to its back.

“How long are you going to make me wait?” the wolf questions, its husky voice deep and rumbly.

“Wh-what are you?”

The wolf sighs before shaking its head. “Humans, so foolish and a waste of my time,” the wolf mutters before standing. With a single bound the white furred wolf clears the gate, leaving a small sized wolf pup behind. The two chunin stares at the tiny pup before looking at each other.

The pup starts barking and whining before a long white tail appears over the top of the gate and wraps around the small wolf. Before the chunins can say anything the tail and its package disappears over the gate and they are forced to look at each other.

“We better let Hokage-sama know about this,” one of them finally says before the tallest one disappears in a whirl of leaves. “Today was such a nice day too,” the remaining chunin mutters as he settles down to continue guard duties - this time with his full attention.

The white wolf was careful in where it places its paws, the pup riding on its head and barking about all the strange trees and the strange animals. Every once awhile the wolf would pause to correct the pup’s assumptions - that the trees are not trees but buildings and the animals are humans. Such things like those.

Eventually the wolf and its passenger arrives at the tallest tower where the Hokage stood from his balcony, the only place where he can stand eye to eye with the wolf demon. “Hello, what can I do for you?” the old man greets the wolf - who had been warned by Oretzi, six months ago, that her pack will send the Monkhood plant with one of their own wolves.

“I have a package for the pup - Kazama Oretzi - and I shall only deliver it to her and no other,” the wolf tells the man only to retrieve a puzzled look.

“I apologize, but I understood none of that.”

The wolf sighs as the pup on its head barks something at him. The wolf takes a minute to search its memory for the language which the man speaks. _“I have a package for Kazama Oretzi,”_ the wolf repeats, retrieving a nod from the man. _“I will not hand it over to anyone except the pup.”_

“I see. Well, Inuzuka Oretzi is out on a mission at the moment so I’m afraid you are in for a bit of a wait,” the man tells the wolf demon.

 _“Not Inuzuka Oretzi. **Kazama** Oretzi,”_ the wolf corrects the man, putting an emphasis on the hanyou’s last name.

“I understand who the package is for, Ookami-san, however, Oretzi-chan has been adopted and her surname changed to Inuzuka.”

The wolf growls and tosses its head, accidently throwing off the small pup who yelps at the sudden movement. Realizing its mistake the wolf tries to catch the pup with its tail only to find that a woman hold the small runt with a small wolf-like dog next to her. Well, large by human standards but compare to the wolf he was small.

“Hello, I hear you have a package for my daughter?” the woman comments as she scratch the pup’s head before the wolf’s tail wraps around the pup’s midsection, lifting her away from the woman.

 _“I have no package for your daughter,”_ the wolf says simply as it places the pup down on its head once again.

 _“The hanyou whom you’re searching for has taken on my companion’s clan’s name. She has accepted Kazama Oretzi as her daughter,”_ the dog informs the wolf.

 _“You speak the human’s language… I suppose you’re not just a pet,”_ the wolf comments drily, as every wolf in the world looks down upon the dogs - bred to be humans’ best friends, their lives handed to them on silver platters. Not even the dog demons have any respect from the wolf demons.

 _“I am not,”_ Kuromaru says in agreement. _“Your pup has been a great addition to our clan - our pack.”_ The wolf looks at the dog in curiosity at the mention of pack. _“As the Hokage has said she is out on a mission at the moment. But her name is no longer Kazama. It is Inuzuka.”_

 _“She will forever be Kazama Oretzi for that is the name she has been given by her mother,”_ the wolf retorts.

“In any case, regardless what her name is, you are retrieving a great deal of looks because of your size,” Tsume interrupts what appeared to be the beginning of an argument. “Do you care to wait for the pup at our compound?”

 _“I will wait for her here,”_ the wolf snorts, already sitting itself by the entrance of the tower, its tails curled around its legs to take as little space as possible - which was quite a lot consider its size.

Tsume sighs as she scratches the back of her neck. “Kuromaru, can you keep it company?” she asks her companion, reluctant to leave the wolf alone - hoping that the presence of her companion will keep most idiots from starting something. She thought that it is best she has some words with the Hokage regarding this new development.

~Kazama~

Oretzi sat on top of a large boulder with a calm Toro the cat, her scratches from the brief fight she had with the cat already healing. Hoshi and Tamashii were scowling at the cat - bearing several scratches from when they were attempting to separate their teammate from the hellish cat. Anko stood nearby, shaking her head at the trio.

“Well, I suppose this is a mission success,” the jonin comments as Oretzi rubs the cat’s belly.

“Do we have to take him back?” Oretzi asks.

“Do you want to fail this mission?” Anko questions her, worried that she might be becoming attached to the cat. How strange it was, for a wolf hanyou to be attached to a cat when the felines and canines tend to be at fangs and claws with each other.

“Well, no but he says that Lady Shijimi smolders him all the time,” Oretzi says, causing the three of them to look at her strangely. “What?”

“… ‘He said’?” Hoshi repeats.

“Hai?”

Hoshi leans over to press the back of her hand to the hanyou’s forehead. “She doesn’t have a fever,” she comments before Oretzi shakes her head.

“I can talk to other animals you know,” Oretzi pouts at her. Her teammates look at her in surprise, having not even known that little detail.

“Including cats?”

“Hai,” Oretzi nods her head before the cat meows and the hanyou looks down at the feline. “You sure?” To their surprise the trice damned cat nods its head. “There are dogs inside the compound. They’re going to chase you.” The cat meows again and she sighs. “Okay,” she says before hopping down the boulder and placing the cat on her shoulders. “Let’s go!” she says cheerfully.

Anko chuckled and motion for her to start walking, trailing after her three students as she mentally assess them after the month they’ve spent doing D-rank missions. Physically not much has changed aside from Oretzi receiving her Inuzuka tattoos from the elders - her rapid healing taking away most of the pain that came with them.

Training the trio was surprisingly easy with Tamashii and Hoshi already somewhat experienced and improving their chakra control with the tree and water walking exercises. So setting Oretzi onto the same exercises was fairly simple and with the support of her teammates she was able to master the exercises fairly easily, putting her on the same level of control they have.

Their teamwork - after Oretzi managed to get Tamashii to loosen up - was able to improve to a point where they didn’t need to exchange a lot of words for the others to have a grasp of their plans. Oretzi was able to master the elements she has an affinity for except for fire - out of pure stubbornness and refusal to even consider the element. Tamashii - with an affinity for lightning - was able learn a few jutsu from Kakashi and a few other jonin, picking up a few more from the scrolls in the library. Hoshi had an affinity for wind and was able to learn a few jutsu from a combination of scrolls and Asuma. Already the trio are talking about how to combine their elemental jutsu together to strengthen their respective attacks.

Aside from them improving their teamwork and their skills with nature transformation Anko had them working on their speed - reasoning that they’ll need to move fast to get in and out of any buildings to do any assassinations. Putting chakra weight seals - specifically designed to add more pounds onto the users with every five percent they put into the seals - on them to help improve their muscle mass and give them resistances. Already they’re capable of moving twice the speed they were before. Oretzi’s speed improving the most out of the three of them with her body seemingly made for it - unfortunately her body weight in general hasn’t improved, despite Akimichi Chouza’s attempts.

In addition of improving their speed - with it their stamina - she had them work on their taijutsu. She taught Tamashii a new taijutsu style - to give him something so that he’s not relying heavily on the Gentle Fist. Gave Hoshi a few pointers about her own style seeing that it’s already suited to her. Oretzi, tried all she could, was unable to keep from reverting to her instincts when she fight. So they had Oretzi - the instincts, Tamashii - the refined, and Hoshi - the wildcard.

“Anko-sensei!” she hears Oretzi call for her, pulling her out of her thoughts. Only for her to realize that they’re close to the Hokage tower and… She tilts her head back to look at the large white furred wolf that seems to have taken up residency next to the tower.

“Gaki, is this one of your wolves?” she questions the girl who is staring at the wolf with a half-smile.

“This is Moon-Chaser,” Oretzi says cheerfully, not even the slightest bit worried about the cat that is digging his claws into her shoulders. “He’s Alpha and Prima’s oldest son.”

“Pup,” the wolf greets the hanyou, his tails undoing the straps that held the large scroll to his back. “The plant as requested,” he says, setting the thing in front of the hanyou who was tiny compared to the thing.

“Moon-Chaser, that scroll is too big for me!” she protests to him. He compares the sizes before sighing.

“How troublesome,” he mutters before his tails does some signs and the scroll is surrounded by smoke. When it clears the now human sized scroll falls into the hands of its intended receiver. With its task completed the white wolf makes to leave, seeing no further reason to remain.

That is, until a series of high pitched barks reminded him of something. “Ah, right.” One of the wolf’s tail reaches for the tiny pup on his head and he deposits the runt in Oretzi’s care. “A gift to you from the Prima.”

Oretzi stares wide eyed at the small pup in her arms, purple eyes meeting brown. “The Prima is parting with one of her pup, your own sister?”

“It is of no loss to the Prima. She would not last one day with the pack,” Moon-Chaser answers, his tone of voice cold to Oretzi’s ears.

“Ah…” Oretzi rubs the pup’s head. “In that case give the Prima my thanks.” Moon-Chaser nods his head before walking away.

“Gaki?” she hears Anko say from behind her.

“Hai?”

“Is everything okay?” Anko could see the sadness in the girl’s shoulders at what the large wolf had said and it worried her.

Oretzi looks away from the pup in her arms and shakes her head. “Nah. Everything’s fine,” she tells the older woman before she holds up the scroll. “I have the Monkhood though.”

Anko smirks and ruffles the hanyou’s hair. “Great, now you can stop burning through your closet,” she teases her.

“Anko-sensei!” Oretzi whines before she got assaulted by licks to the face by the pup. “Ew,” she pouts, wiping her face. That’s when she was asked about why Moon-Chaser left by the pup so she tells her that she will explain later. “Are we doing any training after we give Toro back to Lady Shijimi?”

Anko glances at her other students for a quick assessment before shaking her head. “The rest of today should be used for meditation or personal training,” she tells them. “So let’s report this as a mission success and then you guys can go home.”

Oretzi nods her head and walks into the tower with her team, unaware of Kuromaru slipping away to return to the compound to alert Hana about the new addition to their clan.

~Kazama~

“Oretzi!!” Hana howls for her sister, impatient to get her out of the house and to the Yamanaka’s house to retrieve her specially treated clothes.

“No!” the hanyou protests from the inside of her bedroom, refusing to take one step out.

“Oretzi, you get your butt out here now!” Hana growls at her little sister.

“No!”

“I will use Gatsuuga if you don’t get your butt out here in five seconds!”

“I will not!”

Hana growls as she prepares to use the Gatsuuga, her patience worn thin at this point. That is, until Tsume intervenes, not in the mood to see her house destroyed because the two siblings couldn’t work out whatever it was that was bothering the younger girl. “Go and wait downstairs for us,” she tells her oldest daughter. Hana grumbles under her breath and walks away, leaving the elder Inuzuka alone to deal with the stubborn hanyou.

“Oretzi-chan,” the woman knocks on the door and waits for her to answer.

The door swings open to reveal the pup in Hana’s old clothes - having had to give her entire wardrobe over to the Yamanaka clan - and Tsume could detect a hint of discomfort in the girl’s movements. Hana’s old clothes, from when she was 5’1”, consisted of slightly loose shorts that falls just past her knees and a long sleeved shirt. On Oretzi, however, it is evident that the loose clothes are tighter. The shorts stopping mid-thighs instead of ending at her knees and the shirt is clearly tight against the hanyou’s chest with the slight development she has going on there and the sleeves strained against the toned muscles that the girl has.

Tsume is both amused by the vast difference between her two daughters and worried at how fast Oretzi is developing. The girl is only eight years old, almost nine, and she has a body of a girl who just hit puberty - thankfully without the menstruation cycle. The only way she can explain it is that the presence of Oretzi’s demonic heritage is accelerating her aging process and she briefly wonders when the aging will slow or stop.

“Now, why are you giving your ane-chan such a hard time?” Tsume questions her daughter. “You know that she’s in heat and because she doesn’t have a mate she has no way to relieve the pressure of it.”

“I know… but I don’t wanna go outside in these clothes!” Oretzi protests as Tsukiko - the wolf pup - yips gleefully from her bed at the sight of Tsume.

“You need to get your clothes so you can get out of those,” Tsume argues, going over to the pup to pick her up as per her request. She then sits on the edge of the bed, studying the girl for a moment. “Well, we can probably make some adjustments so you can feel better about them,” she comments as she frees a kunai. “Come here,” she instructs her daughter.

Oretzi obeys and stands still as her mother uses the kunai to cut away the sleeves at the shoulders. Tsume then shortens the hemline of the shirt, tying the ends so that the flimsy material doesn’t go flying up to reveal her daughter’s bandaged chest. The woman finally gets to the shorts, cutting somewhat along the bottom of the shorts to give her some air - since the shorts were clinging to the pup’s legs like second skin.

“Better?” she questions her daughter who starts flexing her arms and legs before nodding her head. She then hands Oretzi a roll of bandages to use to cover up her black markings - the family unable to determine what they are for and Oretzi unable to explain the origin of them, only able to say that she had them since she could remember.

The black markings - when Oretzi is not dressed in anything - seems to start at the right side of her midsection in the form of full moon. Black vine like markings spread to her right arm, twisting around the limb, and partially to her right thigh. The markings on her arm stops at her wrist, forming some sort symbol that none of the humans are able to figure out.

“Hai,” Oretzi smiles as she covers up the visible markings.

“Good, now go apologize to your ane-chan and pick up your clothes,” Tsume instructs her before walking out of the room, placing Tsukiko down on the bed once again.

The excited pup yips at her and she sighs at the runt’s hyperactivity. “For someone who was rejected from the pack you sure are one small energy ball,” she teases the pup, tackling her to start a tickle war. She then picks up the pup and carries her downstairs since her legs are too short to keep up with Hana and Oretzi’s pace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I need to explain something about this chapter... I'm not sure what though... Oh well, any questions just leave a review or pm and I'll try my best to explain.
> 
> (1) Koinu means puppy. I'd imagine that Oretzi would be resistant to that nickname like she was with her imouto but at the same time it's not so blantantly obvious so... *shrugs*
> 
> (2) It goes with the whole 'survival of the fittest' theory. The smallest tends to be overlooked or pushed away to give the nutrients to the more capable.
> 
> Oh, also, any time there's an animal talking and there's underlines it means that they're not speaking the humans' language.


	9. Chapter 9

Oretzi flexes her hands as she readjusts herself to the weapons after taking them to Higurashi’s Weapon Shop, the store owned by her rival’s father, for repairs. She pushes a little bit of chakra into the weapon for the blades to pop out with a very subtle hiss that only her ears can catch, smirking to herself at the fluid grace of the six blades appearing from the metal vambraces. The blades are approximately nearly a foot long, maybe half an inch short, and they do not curve like claws but the way they are positioned gives the illusion of being claws. Each blade are positioned that they appear in the space above each knuckles.

“A job well done,” she compliments the man as she pushes a bit more chakra to disengage the weapon - returning it to its dormant state.

“Thank you, Inuzuka-san,” he grins, bowing to the nine year old.

“How’s Tenten?” she asks after her rival, curious to know how her bukijutsu training is coming along.

“Oh she’s good, determined to beat you,” he tells her, gesturing to the back of the shop where various thuds could be heard.

“That’s good to hear. She’s going to be the best kunoichi in her class,” Oretzi comments as she offers her hand to the man. The weapon smith smiles at her as he shakes her hand before bidding her a good day as she leaves.

She continued flexing her hands to get the tekagi-shuko weapon to readjust to her muscles. She had to get it repaired after a particularly damaging blow from Hoshi’s nintaijutsu the week before. Anko-sensei had taught all of them how to combine their element chakra with their taijutsu and Hoshi’s skill with wind was particularly destructive with the ability to basically turn her body into one big giant blade. Tamashii’s affinity for lightning was actually more dangerous for Oretzi and Hoshi since the electricity can disrupt their body’s signals. Needless to say they always tag team him when Anko gives them permission to have a three-way fight.

Oretzi, in the two months since her ninth birthday, managed to almost rival her ane-chan in terms of height - standing at the height of 5’4 to Hana’s 5’6. Her weight, however, still need improvement as her body consume more than she can readily give it, even with the Akimichi clan’s help. In fact, she almost ate them out of their compound at one point. Instead, what happened was that instead of gaining weight she gained muscle definition, turning her skinny body to a toned somewhat athletic -underweight- body.

In an effort to keep her youki and chakra within reasonable levels after the latest spike - since each increase of both of her youki and chakra she has to retrain herself - she managed to convince the Hokage to place a seal on her. The seal, as designed by the Gama Sannin, will consistently bind both her youki and chakra. In other words she’ll only be allowed to access at least ten percent of her chakra.

Normally a dangerous feat for any normal shinobi but because her body keeps changing, maturing at a faster rate, the sealing is the best way to keep her from becoming too strong at an early age. The only one capable of undoing the seal on her is the Hokage, Jiraiya, and as a precaution for extreme emergencies Anko.

In any case she needs to prepare for her team’s first C-rank mission, a simple escort mission to Suna in Kaze no Kuni. So that means light clothing, rationings, and - she looks down at her bare feet - shoes. Anko had vetoed her protests about shoes, stating that where they will be heading she’ll be glad that she’s wearing shoes because the hot sand will make her feel like the skin on her feet is burning off. She is also to wear clothes that will cover most of her skin vs. her usual bare minimum outfits.

With a reluctant sigh she shunshin home to put together her supplies, sealing them in several scrolls before changing her outfit in favor of loose pants, a short sleeved shirt with bandages wrapped up to her shoulders, the leather bands for the tekagi-shuko already covering and protecting the length of her forearms. For shoes she has to go through Hana’s closet before finding something useable and her size. She also grabs a cloak to wear over her outfit and - upon locating Tsukiko - her knapsack to carry the pup in since she’s still too small to effectively keep pace with the team.

The wolf pup has grown somewhat in the last four months since she joined the Inuzuka clan but her status as the runt of the litter seems to be working against her, often making herself depressed at her perceived weakness. At such Akamaru, Kuromaru, and Oretzi are required to help bolster her self-esteem by telling her that she’s still young and when she becomes much older she will trump even her oldest brother in size. After all, she was approximately two months old when she arrived with Moon-Chaser with the Monkhood plant. Also, because she’s a full wolf demon she has a much longer lifespan than the average wolves therefore her maturing rate is slower - since they almost look like adult wolves by six months. She possibly won’t reach her full size for another year or two.

“Where are we going, nee-chan?” Tsukiko questions, her head peek out from beneath the flap of the knapsack.

“We’re headed to Kaze no Kuni,” Oretzi answers in wolf so that no one around her thinks she is insane for communicating with an animal. The language leaving her throat without a hint of an accent after spending nearly five years using it.

“Kaze no Kuni?”

“It means the Wind Country. More specifically we’re heading to Sunagakure no Sato,” Oretzi tells the pup, “Which means Village Hidden by Sand.” Tsukiko’s natural curiosity of the world in general often prompts her to ask questions and because she had one time been like that Oretzi has a great deal of patience for the pup.

“Oretzi-chan!” she hears Hoshi call her name as she nears the West gate from which they are due to depart from.

“Hoshi-chan,” she greets with Tsukiko barking a greeting as well. “Ready?” she asks her.

“Born ready!” the bold Akino heiress smirks before she plays briefly with Tsukiko. “Have you seen Tamashii?”

“Not since yesterday,” Oretzi replies as she leans against a tree after removing the knapsack from her shoulder - after all, squishing Tsukiko would guarantee a one way ticket to hell curtsey of her okaa-san and ane-chan.

“Nee-chan!” Tsukiko jumped as she tries to get Oretzi’s attention. Once she sees she has it the pup then proceeds to demonstrate a jutsu she has been learning from Kuromaru. The pup jumps and - to the duo’s surprise - spins at a ferocious speed at another nearby tree, nearly drilling through the trunk before she loses momentum. 

Oretzi catches the little pup as she bounces back, looking at the good sized hole she managed to create. “Impressive, Tsuki,” she scratches the pup’s belly with a smile before briefly using a medical jutsu to heal what little injuries the pup’s healing isn’t fixing immediately. “Is this what you’ve been learning from Kuromaru?” she asks the pup.

_“Hai!”_ the pup manages to say in their language, causing Hoshi to squeal in delight at the kawaii pup. Oretzi immediately loses her grip on her companion as her teammate snatches her up in a tight hug. “Nee-chan!” Tsukiko whines at her as the hanyou double over in laughter.

“Sorry, Tsukiko, you brought that upon yourself.” She stops laughing when she feels someone’s presence and looks to find that Tamashii is slowly approaching them with a slight hobble, a pained expression on his face. “Hey, Soul-boy, what’s wrong?” she calls out to the Hyuuga, catching Hoshi’s attention as well who was gob smacked at the sight of their obviously hurting teammate.

“Tamashii!” Hoshi darts over to him with Oretzi and - to anyone watching they would be amused by the wolf pup’s attempt to run - Tsukiko right behind her. She helps the Hyuuga boy to a nearby seat and - as the official medic-nin on the team - runs a diagnostic jutsu over him before finding that he pulled a few muscles here and there with signs of some sort of foreign chakra lingering in his system.

“What happened?” Oretzi asks worried with Tsukiko whining questions after questions at the boy.

“The main branch, they were unhappy with me about learning the Eight Trigrams,” Tamashii coughs before his two teammates use a medical jutsu to ease his pain.

“The way I see it they’re a bunch of jerks,” Oretzi growls before Anko shows up, raising her eyebrow at the strange scene her students created with their closeness. One would assume that they have a special relationship with one another if she didn’t know about Oretzi’s true age.

“Okay gaki, ready to gear and -,” she stops when she notices the pained expression on Tamashii’s face. “Damn, did they use the juinjutsu on you?” she questions him, used to seeing the same look on her own face after a painful night of the curse seal on her shoulder acting up. When she sees him nod she has to curse in her head as she thinks of what to do. They have to leave now to escort their client to Sunagakure but at the same time she knows that the pain from the juinjutsu usually takes a while to dispel.

“Juinjutsu?” Oretzi mutters before she looks at Hoshi for an explanation.

“It literally translate into Cursed Seal techniques. Its sole purpose is to bring a person or people under their control,” Hoshi explains, staring directly at Tamashii. Prompting Oretzi to do the same.

Oretzi turns her attention to Anko who has a hand presses against her neck with her eyes distant with some sort of memory. The young hanyou looks between Tamashii and Anko for several seconds before making a note to do some studying into juinjutsu with two of her team affected by this.

“Anko-sensei, should we tell Hokage-sama that we will not be able to complete the mission?” the hanyou asks her before Tamashii loudly protests that he can still fight. Oretzi gives him a long look in conjuncture with Anko before giving in to him. “Our client is here,” she mutters, causing her teammates to turn their collective attention to the man walking up to the gate.

Dressed casually in traveling clothes, Oretzi is struck with the notion that this man will be the source of many headaches for the next while. “Suterareta Hasha?” Anko questions with a bored tone. Oretzi mentally translated the name to find that it means ‘Abandoned Champion’.

“Hai,” the man nods his head, his eyes traveling over the group before landing on the wolf hanyou. The look in his eyes chilled her to her bones and she had to fight back the urge to growl at him. “Shall we go?” he asks politely.

Anko, having noticed her student’s reaction, nods her head and motions for her team to get into position. Oretzi, with her nose and ability to scent out possible traps, took point while Tamashii took the rear guard. Hoshi, using her family’s kekkei genkai, mirrored Oretzi - forming a pure human form of the hanyou - and cast a partial Henge on herself to mimic the wolf aspects of her teammate to give people the illusion that there are twins on the team instead of just one. Anko took the position to the right of their client.

In short, the team were ready for any for any possible danger that can send this mission skyrocketing to a whole new ballgame. Plus, Anko was under no delusions about her student’s reaction to the man and wanted the mission to be done and over with so she can get Oretzi far away from him.

~Kazama~

Inuzuka Tsume was not having a good day. The reason simply was that she couldn’t find her daughter no matter where she looked. Not even Kuromaru could scent her and that alone was alarming. With all the possible locations exhausted and no signs of her daughter or her teammates she heads directly to the Hokage tower to question him about the whereabouts of her daughter.

Disregarding the secretary’s attempt to keep her from entering the office Tsume all but kicks in the door, almost but not quite startling the elderly man from his paperwork. “Where is my daughter,” she snarls, her long day playing a big role of her anger. Even that said most Kages would be displeased with the disrespect she is showing the man.

However, Sarutobi is well used to the actions of the Inuzuka clan and as a result isn’t likely to take offense to her protective instincts regarding her adopted daughter. “Oretzi-chan is currently on a C-rank mission with her teammates to Sunagakure no Sato,” he tells her, puffing away on his pipe.

As accepting as he is about his shinobi’s actions he was not prepared for Tsume to slam her hands on his desk, scattering his paperwork to his dismay. “You mean to tell me that you sent Oretzi out so close to that time of the month?!” she all but roars at the elderly man.

“Isn’t she a bit young to be getting the monthly visitor?” Sarutobi questions, his mind apparently going senile on him if her expression is to go by.

“Hokage-sama, I have a lot of respect for you, but please, for the stake of all our sanity, recall what Matron Kin told us a year ago.” Tsume, with nothing else she could do regarding the situation, sits herself in one of the chairs available and watches him with her eyes intent.

Sarutobi frowns to himself as he considers the incident in question. Dropping his pipe as he realizes just what has Tsume in a tizzy. He looks at the sun before searching for his calendar, his fingertip finding the day’s date. “Oh Kami-sama,” he mutters in dread as he stares at the white circle next to the number. “How could I forget?”

“Can you recall them?” Tsume questions him urgently.

“No, they’ve been gone for hours. They’re probably already close to Kawa no Kuni,” he quickly writes a message, sealing an item that will hopefully ensure that the team’s survival for the time being, before ordering an ANBU to send the message after Team 13 with one of the fastest messenger hawks available.

Tsume looks at her companion, worry visible in her eyes. “Do you think it’ll get there in time?”

Sarutobi looks at them grimly. “I wish I could say,” he confesses. “Does Mitarashi-san truly have no idea about what is to happen?”

“I never thought to inform her,” Tsume confesses. “The pup has always returned home before the sunsets so there was never a need.” She shakes her head as she realize that the lack of information sharing has possibly endangered the jonin and genins. If something happens to the team the responsibility lies solely on her shoulders.

“What about Oretzi-chan, surely she is aware of this.”

Tsume shakes her head. “She never showed any signs of recalling what happened during the night. She goes to sleep before the moon rises and wakes up when the moon is gone with no recollection of what happens.”

Sarutobi sighs as he props his chin up on his hands. “In that case we will need to remedy this as well as inform Mitarashi and her students about Oretzi-chan’s condition to prevent further situations such as this.”

Tsume nods her head before getting up to leave, pausing before the door. “I… I hope nothing happens to those kids,” she confesses before walking out of the office.

“I hope so too,” Sarutobi mutters as he goes back to his paperwork, cursing when he realizes that the previously orderly papers have been scattered all about his office and he now has to clean up the mess.

~Kazama~

Oretzi pauses again, her hand pressed against the trunk of the tree she stood in, her eyes drifting up to the sky unbidden. Below her she can hear her teammates moving along at a more sedated pace with their client to consider. Below she had left a kage bunshin in her place to do her own personal scouting to get away from the creepy staring of their client.

She couldn’t see the sun but she can sense the position of it, aware that nightfall is approaching and with this awareness she can feel this sense of unease crawling under her skin. It was getting to the point where she feels like she needs to get rid of the heavy burdensome clothes.

“Oretzi!” she hears Hoshi calls after her, “Stop staring at the sun, you’ll turn blind!”

She shakes her head to snap her attention back to attention and starts moving again.

Anko frowns at her student, wondering what exactly seems to be bothering the hanyou. For this is probably the fifth time in the last thirty minutes that the girl stopped to stare at the skies. Before she can go and check on her they hear a screech of a messenger hawk before the bird dive-bombs them, pulling up just in time to land on Anko’s outstretched arm. She accepts the scroll and before she can say or offer the bird any refreshment it takes off, leaving deep furrows across her arm.

Taking no time to complain about the injuries she opens the scroll, recognizing the kanji that said urgency, and reads the message quickly. Her eyes wide as she looks ahead to where her youngest student is at. “ORETZI!!” she calls after the hanyou, swiping chakra over the seal where a pair of cuffs appear in her hands.

The hanyou stops and returns to the group, dropping in from above. Already eying the pair of silver cuffs with long chains connecting them. “Er… what’s that for?” she asks cautiously. Anko doesn’t answer immediately, her eyes glancing worriedly up to the sky before she motions for the girl to give her wrists. “Anko-sensei?”

“Oretzi, do you trust me?”

The young girl frowns at the jonin before nodding her head, “Hai.”

“Then trust me on this,” the snake mistress pleas the girl who sighs and - after eying the cuffs again, she removes her tekagi-shuko weapons - offers her bare wrists to the woman. “Hoshi, Tamashii, find us a campsite, now. Suterareta-san, I’m sorry but we need to set up camp now.” The man gives her a disgruntled look before complying. With everyone except Oretzi gone Anko carefully places the cuffs around the girl’s wrists after wrapping the chains around her neck, chest and waist - limiting her movements and ensuring that if the hanyou wants out she’ll have to hurt herself, as per the instructions on the scroll.

“Anko-chan?” Oretzi whispers, confused and at the same time scared by the seriousness of the situation. As human she seems she is still a wolf hanyou and right now her instincts are screaming for her to break free and run.

The snake mistress runs her hands through Oretzi’s hair in an attempt to calm her, meeting her scared student’s eyes straight on. The girl was only nine years old and already she stands at the same height as herself, meeting her eye to eye. “I know that you don’t understand what’s going on. But I’m going to be right here besides you during the whole thing, okay?” Oretzi nods her head before she is pulled close to the older woman and a pair of warm moist lips touch her bare forehead. “Let’s go, gaki,” the woman turns and walks after their team, leaving a puzzled but calmer wolf hanyou behind her.

Oretzi takes a deep breath and, with one last look towards the darkening sky, follows her sensei to the camp.

~Kazama~

The sun has just set, leaving the genin team and their client in the harsh light of their campfire for an hour before the moon would begin its climb. But already they can see that something is wrong with Oretzi. The dark brown color of her eyes has slowly faded, replaced by a red glow that seems to grow stronger with every passing minute.

It was terrifying to watch, especially when her body begins to contort into a new shape, becoming more wolfish in ways she never managed, even in her extreme anger or when she was using her youki as a second skin. The two genin and sensei are forced to watch as their comrade starts to scream in agony as bones break and reform - all four limbs restrained at this point as Anko had added a final piece of Oretzi’s bondage just before the sun had set.

Brown fur sprouts from beneath the girl’s clothes as her body begins to grow in size, ripping the fabrics into shreds with the sheer increase in mass. Her head contorts into a large wolf head proportional to Oretzi’s new body, her maw open to reveal the row of sharp canines as her eyes - opening briefly - turn completely red where not even the whites or pupils of her eyes are visible.

A full thirty minutes passed before the painful transformation was over and Oretzi - or the thing that is Oretzi - lays in a quivering ball of fur. Pained huffs puncturing the air before the creature stirs, completely red eyes becoming focused.

Anko gulps as she realizes for the first time that Oretzi has just turned into what appears to be a giant - she thinks she could be capable of standing at just past six feet tall - wolf hybrid since the front paws looks capable of handling things like regular hands. She says hybrid not to speak of those who are born to a wolf and dog but of the strange blend between wolf and human, going beyond what Oretzi is as a hanyou. As the wolf starts fighting to stand Anko recalls a part of the message and looks at her students.

“By any chance does anyone know how to play an instrument or sing?” she asks. The two blank stares she gets as a result of her question answers that and she curses as she looks at the large wolf hybrid. How the hell is she supposed to calm her down without the aid of music?

Without any other choice she starts humming and before long the wolf stills its frantic movements, humming along with her as she relaxes, her long tail thumping in time with the melody. Tamashii and Hoshi, seeing the effect music has on their transformed teammate, quickly joins in their voices. The combine efforts of the hanyou’s teammates lullabied her into the dreamland where a familiar melody unlike their humming floats through the air, further calming the wolf.

The silence that followed after Oretzi’s breathing has evened out was so heavy that no one knew how to break it and Anko doubted any of them wanted to. She clutches the scroll with the Hokage’s brief but to the point instructions about how to subdue Oretzi’s wolf in her hands. Her heart heavy as she consider that the girl looked so scared and even her wolf looked scared - desperate to break free.

“What… what did…?” Tamashii couldn’t form the right words for his question.

“I don’t know, gaki,” Anko confesses as Tsukiko finally escapes Hoshi’s grasp. Before any of the shinobi could stop the pup she runs to the slumbering wolf and snuggles up to her companion’s side. To their surprise the hanyou curls her tail instinctively around the pup - pulling her closer to her larger frame even in her sleep.

Anko looks at their client who, after Oretzi had been lullabied to sleep, laid out his bedroll and apparently has fallen into some kind of slumber. “Hokage-sama only gave me a brief summary of what was going to happen.” She studies the manifestation of Oretzi’s demonic side and found that while terrifying she couldn’t help but sense that her Oretzi is still in there. “Get some rest,” she instructs them, creating a kage bunshin to watch the perimeter. They may still be within Hi no Kuni but she had no delusions that they will not run into trouble within their own country.

She takes a minute to watch the even breathing of the wolf that is her student, Oretzi, and after she is sure that her other students are asleep as well she leaves her seat to kneel next to the wolf. She cautiously touches the girl’s mane of fur before gently shifting her fingers through the soft tresses of the dark brown fur. Something akin purr of contentment rumbles through the wolf’s chest, prompting the woman to move closer to the restrained girl. She just knew that the girl wouldn’t hurt her and eventually sleep overtook her and she slumps into Oretzi’s warm fur.

~Kazama~

_ “Oretzi-kun.” _ _The hanyou whines at the intrusion of her dreams, being slowly pulled back into the land of awareness. “Oretzi-kun.” The girl opens one of her eyes, blinking away the blurs, to find a red haired girl smiling cheerfully at her. “Oretzi-kun, I learned a new song for you.” The girl brings the flute to her lips and a slow peaceful melody surrounds them and Oretzi rocks her body side to side to the song. Clapping her hands happily when the song concludes and the two girls are left beaming at each other. _

_ “Hoku-chan, you’re really good!” _ _the hanyou giggles, throwing her small arms around the slightly older and bigger girl._

_ “Arigatou, Oretzi-kun!” _ _the red head smiles before looking up at the sky. “Ano, I need to leave, Oretzi-kun,” the girl says sadly._

_ “Nani, you just got here,” _ _the hanyou protests._

_ “I know,” _ _the girl sighs and rubs the girl’s ear. “But my lord-sama, he’s training me to be the best. I can’t fail him, Oretzi-kun.”_

_ “Will I see you again tomorrow?” _ _the hanyou asks hopefully. But when she sees the downtrodden look on the older girl’s face she knows that it’s not likely to happen._

_ “Gomen nasai, Oretzi-kun,” _ _the girl says when she sees the sadden look. “I promise that I’ll play more songs for you the next time we meet!” With that promise she runs off, leaving the six year old hanyou alone._

~Kazama~

Oretzi whines as her mind slowly becomes back to the real world, her body registering two presences next to her and… she makes a face as she realizes that she can feel the grass under her and the wind across her back. She can still feel the restraints of the cuffs, the tightness of the chains around her neck, chest, and waist - limiting her movements.

In any case, as she stirs and wiggles to put herself in a better position the heavy weight against her side moves away before something covers her naked form. Turning her head to the side afforded her the view of her sensei, without her trench coat.

“Ohayo,” she whispers, her voice cracking.

“Ohayo, gaki,” the woman returns as she moves the exhausted hanyou slightly to get to the cuffs with the jutsu to undo the bindings. However, instead of coming off like she expected them to do the chains simply vanish with the cuffs still firmly on the girl’s wrists.

Oretzi notices the absence of the chains so she pushes herself upright, her face making a puzzled expression when she notices the cuffs on her wrists. But before she can comment or question on it Anko throws her one of the storage scrolls from the girl’s knapsack. “Here, gaki, get dressed.”

“What happened last night?” she asks, her mind completely off the cuffs for the moment.

“You don’t remember?” Anko thought she would at least remember something!

“Er… just the…” she frowns as she thinks about what she could remember, already beginning to dress herself. “All I remember is music,” she finally concludes. She closes her eyes as she tries to remember and all that comes to her is flute music, a slow peaceful melody that almost melts her where she stood.

Anko nods her head, not quite wanting to accept this but having no choice about it in any case. She didn’t know what else to do but knew that for the time being it is best to continue on like nothing is wrong. They have a mission to do and Oretzi wouldn’t allow them to return to Konoha unless they truly had to. And since she has no recollection of how potentially dangerous she was last night she wasn’t going to go for returning.

So without further ado the group destroyed any evidence of their camp and moved on, picking up the pace a little to compensate for the early end and late start. Hoshi and Tamashii were silent, more than usual, and Oretzi’s only companion for the travel was Tsukiko who kept asking about the various things she saw, using the hood of her cloak to find a perch on the hanyou’s shoulders. The pup’s excited barks and questioning whines extended to most of the day and Oretzi’s answers were as patient as ever. Not that they could tell since the wolf hanyou was consistently answering in the pup’s native language.

~Kazama~

Night quickly descended upon the group in the middle of Kawa no Kuni and almost immediately the group noticed that Oretzi was behaving strangely once again. Before Anko could apply the jutsu to contain her again the hanyou was gone, forcing the jonin to chase after her, leaving a kage bunshin with the group to watch over them.

As she chased after the transforming hanyou she found pieces of the girl’s clothing, discarded and leaving her a trail. She wasted no time to pick up the clothes, instead focusing on putting more of her chakra to her legs to speed up after the crazily fast hanyou. For once in her life she realizes that her foresight is working against her as she fights to catch up.

When she reaches the end of the trail of clothes she pauses, straining her senses for any hint of her errant student. All around her are dark trees, a hint of a river off somewhere to her left, and she can sense the near peacefulness of the area. But she, for the life of her, cannot sense her errant student and that worried her to a great deal. She slowly circles around, lavender eyes searching the dark trees for any hint of her student, before the rising full moon shines on a group of trees in front of her. As she stares at the trees she sees a pair of previously undetected eyes glow a malicious red.

The wolf, at being detected, starts to growl. A low rumble that seems to climb in pitch with every second as Anko starts to prepare the jutsu that would bind her feral student. Before she can finish that last hand seal Oretzi lunges at her, forcing her to drop her hands and for the unfinished jutsu to dispel harmlessly as she dodges the powerful hanyou. As she moves to keep the hanyou in sight she realizes what Oretzi has been trying to say about her fighting style.

It was never meant to be a hit-and-run guerilla tactic like the Inuzuka clan’s but rather like how a wolf hunts. Isolating one of her preys before constantly attacking her prey in a way that forces them to tire themself out, leaving small scores of injuries along their body at specific locations that will distract them and tire them out even more before finally landing a strong killing blow.

She realizes this now as she faces down the large 6’4” tall wolf hanyou, faced with fangs about the length of her palm and humanoid paws that is capable of dwarfing her hands. Anko is afforded with a good view of her student’s transformed state and she found that it’d be easier to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow... I'm cruel ain't I? Anyone figured out what she turned into? (Should be fairly obvious) Oh and also, a cookie to anyone who figures out who Hoku-chan is. :D That oughta be fun. Also, if anyone needs help figuring out what Oretzi's weapons look like, google up Wolverine's claws. That's what the blades resemble. The actual outfitting is similar to her wearing leather armbands on her forearms with an additional band around her hands to secure the claws to her hands.
> 
> Anyway, review please! Lemme know what you think!


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